


Wait! Where's the Rest of It?

by Endangered_Slug



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, Short short prompts, These are the tiny things I wrote on Tumblr that I never got around to putting up here until now
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-02
Updated: 2017-04-02
Packaged: 2018-10-14 01:19:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 65
Words: 62,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10525890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Endangered_Slug/pseuds/Endangered_Slug
Summary: The very short and mostly nonsensical prompts from a zillion TMI Tuesdays and promptfests I've held over the past few years. Most of them are no longer than a few sentences.Chapters range from G to NC-17. Anything higher than a T will be noted at the beginning.





	1. Cold Feet

**Author's Note:**

> Anonymous asked: *crawls into your ask box* I'm having a terrible day and I need some cheer-me-up-rumbelle-fic please.. Help? *puppy eyes*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> October 2014 Prompts

Belle had long since figured out that Rumplestiltskin, the all powerful Dark One feared throughout the Enchanted Forrest and quite a few other worlds besides, was in reality no more frightening than a field mouse.

Both could startle you when they popped up unexpectedly and both had extremely cold feet - especially when they were scurrying over your hand in the dark, or, in the case of Rumplestiltskin’s frozen toes, when they were placed on her leg while she was settled in her usual spot on the floor before the fire with a book in her hand and had just gotten to the good part and he felt that she wasn’t paying him enough attention.

And like a field mouse, he was much more frightened of her than she was of him.

She shifted over away from his feet without looking up, tucking her skirts under her knees. She was just getting back into her story when she felt the cold tips of his toes slide back onto her calf. Once again she scooted over a few inches, away from his feet and closer to the fire.

No use, he’d managed to stretch his legs out far enough so that he was just able to touch the bottom of her foot with a toe.

He let out a giggle just loud enough for her to hear, but soft enough for him to deny it if she accused him.

She sighed deeply to herself, resigned to a night of childish games when all she wanted to do was relax.

She slammed the book shut and turned around, exasperated with him at last. “What. Do. You. Want?” she bit out, glaring at him before bursting into bubbling laughter.

“Whassofunny?” he said, at least Belle though that’s what it was. It was difficult to understand him.

“You are, you silly man. Are you comfortable?”

He looked at her from his position on the chair. He had scooted down all the way off the seat until the only thing holding him on it was his shoulders. His head was at an odd angle with his chin resting fully on his chest and he had casually placed his hands folded on top of his chest as if he’d settled down for a chat.

“‘M not a silly man,” he muttered, but with his head at that angle he wasn’t able to articulate fully.

“You’re right. The Dark One would never stoop so low as to… stoop so low like that,” she retorted with a grin. She placed the book to the side and got up, brushing the back of her skirts. “Do you want help?” she asked.

He just scoffed at her and crossed his feet at the ankles which caused him to slip down another inch. He scrambled to stay on the seat, unwilling to budge from his chair.

Stubborn as a badger that man.

She tilted her head in contemplation. He was helpless like that. The most fear man in all the realms and she had him trapped on his chair. She smirked wickedly at him, lifted her foot, and watched as his eyes widened, fear and curiosity warring with each other in his gaze. She lifted and then ever so slowly, set it down oh his ankle.

Th ski of her sole had barely brushed him before he disappeared in a puff of purple smoke and reappeared behind her, his hands clasping her shoulders.

“Careful,” he said in a low shaking voice. “You know what happens when you touch a toad.” he leaned in to whisper in her ear. “You get… warts.”

Belle rolled her eyes but he held her fast so she couldn’t turn around. “You’re not a toad,” she said. “Besides, you started it.”

“Did not!”

She tsked at him. “Did, too, Rumple. Oh for crying out loud. I am not going to stand here and play this game with you.”

He backed away from her and she felt the loss of his heat immediately despite the warmth of the fire and the coziness of the room.

“Very well then… sit!”

Before Belle knew what was happening she found herself placed on his chair and wrapped up in a colorful woolen blanket, her book in her hand and a steaming cup of tea placed on the table beside her.

She looked around the back of the chair. Rumplestiltskin was nowhere to be found.

“That man, sometimes,” she muttered, angrily kicking off the blanket to go after him when she stopped and stared at her freshly besocked feet.

She stared at them for a moment, wiggling her toes in the soft wool, enjoying the way the colors of the yarn rippled with the movement.

“That man, sometimes,” she repeated to herself softly, smiling as she snuggled up under the blanket and picked up her book again.


	2. They Adopt a Pet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> messedupdreamsandmelodies said:
> 
> I literally want you to write all of those fic memes for rumbelle but instead I’ll give you two? 18. Trying to get pregnant 31. Adopting a pet Lol if you ever want more I’ll be happy to help ;)

“Rumple, you promised,” Belle said, her voice quivering in anger. “No more dark magic.”

To his credit, Rumple looked guilty.

 _But he was good at that wasn’t he_ , she thought. Always ready with an excuse and an apology. Well, no more. This time he would have consequences. She held her hand out, reaching for the blue, pointy hat he had clutched in his hands. “Give it to me.”

He twisted the hat tighter in his grip. “Sweetheart, let me explain. I can’t do that.”

“There’s nothing to explain. You lied to me again. Who were going to kill this time, Rumple?”

A flash of hurt crossed his face and Belle felt even more indignant. How dare he feel hurt when he broke his promise?

“No one,” he said, pleadingly. “I—”

She cut him off with the lift of an eyebrow. His shoulders slumped in defeat, head bowed down under the weight of her anger.

He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “At least let me show you?” he asked, his forehead crinkled with worry.

She dropped her hand. “Fine. But don’t even think of pulling any tricks.”

Unbelievably, the corner of his mouth lifted slightly. “Well, it’s not really a trick per se.”

He shook open the hat, the silly blue thing, and she gasped when the stars started to swirl then again when he reached his arm in, all the way up to his elbow. He rummaged around inside of it, cooing under his breath as she stared at him and the hat in turns. 

“What—” she began but stopped when, with a triumphant “A ha!” he pulled his arm back out holding a small, gray rabbit by its ears. The rabbit’s pink nose twitched and its legs kicked the air helplessly. Rumpelstiltskin quickly put his hand underneath it in support and cradled it to his chest. 

“He came with the hat,” he explained. “I call him Fluffy.”


	3. Trying to Get Pregnant

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Second prompt I received from messedupdreamsandmelodies: #18 . Trying to get pregnant. This took a different turn. I literally had two completely different beginnings before settling on this one.

“I’ve decided that you’d make a good father.”

Mr. Gold turned from dusting the delicate crystal mobile (a preposterous thing to hang over a baby’s crib) and faced his assistant. She was staring at him with a strange look on her face, biting her full bottom lip in a way that made him feel very uncomfortable.

“What?” he asked, incredulously.

“A father,” she said, a smile peeking out briefly before she went back to chewing on her lip.

“Are you looking for a new one then, Miss French?” he asked bitterly, fully aware of their age difference and fully aware of how much he hated it.

She flushed and looked away. “No,” she said quietly. “That’s not what I meant at all.” She looked down at the book in her hands before glancing up at him again. “I just… I think you’d be wonderful at it. You’re incredibly patient with Henry and you have a good heart underneath all that bluster. And I have a good sense about these things. I think.”

He set down the soft cloth he was holding, perplexed with the topic in its entirety. “That doesn’t mean I’d be any good at it.”

She moved closer, the warmth of her body penetrating through his wool suit coat and he instinctively leaned towards her.

“Have you thought about it any?”

There were many ways to take that but he deliberately chose the most innocent meaning. “Yes, of course. But I don’t see it happening.” He fiddled with the dust rag before an unbidden thought entered his head. "What about you? Have you thought about children?”

She smiled again, brightly and without hesitation. “I have. Especially lately.”

He imagined her then, beautiful and content and full with someone’s baby and he felt a stab of jealousy rip through his heart. “I imagine you’d have better luck in that regard then.” He turned away from her and concentrated on the way the filtered sunlight shone off the baubles in his shop window. “You should get back to work, Miss French. The back room is in need of your attention.” He closed his eyes tightly against the straining of his heart, wanting to clasp her to him. To hold her and never let go. Wanting her. Wanting. Her.

It was ridiculous. Belle French was a wonderful person and kind to him, but she would never stoop so low as to be with a bitter old man like him.

He heard her light footsteps retreat towards the back and the soft swish of the curtain as it was brushed aside. He refused to turn and watch her leave the room. He had some amount of self-control, small though it was.

“Mr. Gold,” she began, hesitating before continuing with more bravado than she felt. “If you ever want to learn how good a father you would be, you only need to ask. I’d be more than willing to help you find out."

The mobile fell to the floor with a crash as Mr. Gold raced to the back room and to Belle who greeted him with a loving smile and open arms.  
  


* * *

 

 

_Messedupdreamsandmelodies prompted (sort of): Cough continued prompt, Rumbelle finds out Belle is pregnant. (Whether she told him her suspicions, or surprised him, or maybe even just her finding out herself idk do your thing) and no pressure I know this is my 3rd one today sorry I just kinda love this?_

 

“Everyone already knows about us,” Belle said as she place the steaming cup of tea in front of him.

“They do?” he asked, twisting in his chair to look up at her. “How?”

She rolled her eyes before leaning down to kiss the top of his head, bringing her arms around him in a big hug.“Because we’ve been nearly inseparable for eight months. You’ve been seen leaving my apartment at inexcusably early hours during the week and my car is parked in front of your house all weekend, every weekend. Did you think no one would notice?”

“I haven’t considered anyone else to be honest.” He reached up and stroked her cheek. “Has anyone been… Unkind to you about it?”

Belle knew what he was really asking: was she being ostracized? Pointed at? Mocked?

“No. My friends are my friends. Everyone else…” She waved a hand in the air. “Not important.”

She kissed his cheek, loving the way he relaxed against her, tilting his had to give her better access. She ran the tip of her tongue lightly against the shell of his ear before whispering, “But I will let you know what is important.” She stood up, fetching her purse from the back of her chair. She rummaged inside and pulled out a large, lumpy envelope. “It’s Father’s Day!” she exclaimed as she handed it to him.

He took it with some confusion. “That’s still in June, right?”

She nodded, beaming.

He looked down at the envelope in his now trembling hands. “It’s September,” he said, his voice suddenly hoarse.

“I know. Open the card.”

He ripped the envelope open, but instead of a card, it was a small calendar and a pregnancy test. He just had time to notice it had two lines -a positive result - before dropping it with a clatter as he dropped everything to wrap her up in a tight hug.

“Belle,” he said, his voice choked with tears. “Belle, I love you so much.”

She pulled back, smiling. “I know. And I love you, too. And we’re going to be parents!”

There was a mixture of awe and fear in his eyes. “But—”

She punched him lightly on the shoulder. “Don’t you start that I’m-not-good-enough thing now. You will be the best, most loving father in he world. I know it. Let’s worry about all that later. Right now let’s just be happy, okay?”

“You’re right, Belle, of course,” he said, pulling her back and into his lap. He leaned down towards her still flat belly. “Your mum is always right, baby.”

Belle laughed. “It’s way too early for him to hear you.”

“Him?”

She shrugged. “Or her. Does it matter?”

He shook his head in bemusement. “Not in the slightest.”

She rested her forehead against his before kissing the tip of his long nose.

“Look,” she said reaching for the calendar. “I’ve figured out all the important dates and marked them for you.”

She opened it up to a date circle in gold ink. “This is the probable date of conception, though I could be off a few days in either direction. I’ve been keeping track though so this should be fairly accurate.”

He tried not to smirk but failed completely. “I can’t imagine you failing at anything, Belle. But keeping track?”

“Mmmm. Ovulation. You know, those days I won’t let you out of bed?”

“The best time of the month.”

She flipped the pages ahead and he barely had time to see various other dates marked down with notes in the boxes.

“And this,” she said, pointing to a date circled in a rainbow of colors. “Is our due date.”

“In April.”

“Yep.”

She was quiet for a moment before tentatively bringing up her next subject. “So, I was thinking, since everyone already knows and we’ve established that we both don’t care and now that we’re pregnant, I was wondering if you would like to make this more…permanent.”

For the first time he could see worry in her eyes. Was she actually afraid he’d reject her?

He pushed her off as gently as he could and scrambled out of his chair, muttering “wait here” and limped as fast as he could to the study. He’d left his cane by the breakfast table and Belle considered bringing it to him but he was already back, biting off a curse as his leg threatened to give out. He was holding a small blue box in his hand.

Belle helped him back into the chair and he helped her back onto his lap. His hands fiddled with the box a bit before he opened it up, revealing another box, a ring box.“I’ve been thinking of a permanent situation for months, Belle.”

He flipped the lid revealing an exquisite ring, brilliant, flawless, perfect. He hesitated before taking it out, rubbing the diamond with his thumb and Belle suspected that it was something he did quite often.

“Well, actually,” he said, his voice shaking. “Ever since the first week we spent together really. I’ve been hoping—”

She stopped him with a kiss, cradling his face in her hands.

“All you have to do is ask,” she said.

* * *

 

 

 

_**Anonymous** asked:_

_Hi there!! In your October prompts there was a super cute lil fic about Belle and Gold finding out she's pregnant, so question for them..how was your wedding?_

 

They’d originally planned for a small ceremony with a private dinner afterwards, but after Ariel and Kathryn got wind of their engagement, the pageant was on.

The whole town turned out, not just for the refreshments that promised to be top rate, but for the spectacle they envisioned once the rumors of Gold’s impending nuptials to the kindly librarian spread. They’d hired three caterers, a four string quartet and a chamber orchestra t perform at different spots throughout the day having had the main street blocked off since there wasn’t a venue large enough in town to hold everyone who RSVPed. Their reception was beginning to rival Miner’s Day in scale and Gold spent

Belle peeked out from the blinds, now drawn tight to keep the gawkers from gawking.

“It’s not time to go out just yet, my dear,” her husband said with good humor. As far as he was concerned, this ridiculous show was money well spent. He liked the idea of everyone celebrating his marriage to Belle, leaving no doubt in anyone’s mind that she willingly trothed herself to him. He knew there were doubters despite their months long courtship. He knew there were some people who thought he’d outright bought her — as if Belle could be bought. Preposterous notion. Insulting, too.

So he happily shelled out an obscene amount of money just to rub everyone’s noses in it.

Belle, her shining face beaming at him with delight. She looked like a miracle in her wedding gown, so beautiful that it took his breath away.  

“Yes, I know that. I was just wondering…” She turned back to peer out once more. “Do you think we should tell them that we actually got married three days ago?”

* * *

 

_**Anonymous** asked:_

_(October prompt) trying to get pregnant! Belle &Gold, how is the pregnancy going? :D_

 

Belle bared her teeth at him from her bed in the hospital as Gold tried to sooth her through the contractions. 

“I swear to god if you tell me to breath _one more time_ I’m going to rip out your tongue and shove it up your arrggghhhhhhhhhhh….” She groaned in agony as another contraction came, closer and harder than before, cutting off any breath necessary for talking. She let out a series of ‘whoooo, whoooo, whooo’s’ until the tightening of her belly eased up and she was able to take a shaky breath in preparation for the next one.

Her husband looked at her, his forehead creased with worry and his hand gripped tightly in hers.

“I will shove it so far up your arse that you’ll be able to takes your own colon,” she continued, panting heavily, as if she hadn’t spent the last three minutes writhing in pain. 

“That’s very descriptive, sweetheart,” he said, amusement coloring his speech as he watched the monitor next to the bed. “Here comes another one. Deep breath now.”

“Fuck you!” she growled out, but the rest of it was swallowed up by her moaning as the contraction hit her.

 

 

 

 


	4. Second Trimester Woo-Hoo

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous asked: 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I forget what #19 was. Probably pregnancy sex. This chapter is rated M.

Rumplestiltskin groaned as he crawled to the edge of the bed. He was covered with sweat and other fluids, both his and Belle’s - mostly Belle’s, but she wriggled so much that it was inevitable that he would be coated with something eventually. He was sore, out of breath, hungry, and needed a rest.

“Rumple…”

Belle’s voice called to him, urging him to come to her once more and he felt terrible for refusing her because he, quite literally, ached.

She nudged him with a foot. “Come back, sweetheart.” She wriggled, a sated smile on her face which was glistening with perspiration

If he didn’t know better he’d swear that she was whining but Belle never whined. Ever.

“ _Rummmmmmm_ …”

Until now.

“Belle, darling,” he protested. He hated telling her no but dammit, his needed to rest. His legs were killing him, he couldn’t catch his breath and, fuck it all, his cock was sore.

He felt used.

She sidled up to him, wrapping her arms around his midsection with the swell of her belly pressed against his back and despite his exhaustion he felt a burst of pride at the thought of his baby growing inside her.

It was the hormones that was driving her to this desperate brink, he knew that. It seemed once she hit the second trimester and the morning sickness subsided she hit a horny streak to rival any hot-blooded seventeen year-old boy. She was insatiable and though he normally enjoyed her attentions, today she’d jumped him after breakfast and, except for a snack at one, hadn’t let up.

It was going on four in the afternoon.

“Please, Rumple?” She nibbled on his shoulder leaving tiny marks on his flesh along side the bruises and scratches she’d given him earlier.

He sighed. “Belle, darling, I can’t. I’m sorry.”

She out a hand against his cheek and turned his face to hers, kissing him softly. “Magic it,” she said in a firm voice that belied her gentle kisses. “I want you. _Now_.”

He shivered as the golden smoke engulfed him. “Yes, dear.”


	5. The Promise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> volley-belle asked for #2 childhood best friends

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> December 2014 Prompts

Rumford Gold sat on the bench outside Granny’s Diner disregarding the curious stares of the passersby and their noisy brats. He was waiting, waiting for a promise to be kept after nearly fifteen years. It was ridiculous, really. A crap shoot. There was no way she would remember and even if she did, that didn’t mean she would follow through. It had been too long, the promise given on a whim and at a time when neither had an inkling of what that promise actually meant.  
  
It meant everything to Rumford, which was why he was sitting on this cold bench in the wind and probably ruining his suit. Waiting. For her.  
  
He’d always loved Belle French, it seemed. They were in the same second grade class when she moved to town and had struck an unlikely friendship. She with her unruly curls and freckles and sunshine smile and he with his sour face and sullen attitude and scraped knuckles. She’d latched onto him despite his reticence and he gradually crawled out of his shell once she gotten her hooks in deep enough. They were inseparable, the two of them. Belle and Rum. Rum and Belle. When you saw one you knew the other was nearby waiting with a nose in a book or a chunk of concrete in a dirty hand depending on which one you ran into.  
  
They’d made a pact in seventh grade the night before her family moved away, the year everything went to shit and his old man left for good and he’d been sent to live with his aunts over in Bangor. It was simple and stupid, exactly the thing a couple of twelve year olds would come up with and think they were being original.  
  
“Promise me, Rum, that in twenty years we’ll meet here.”  
  
He scoffed, pretending that her moving away wasn’t making his stomach churn. “What, here outside Granny’s?”  
  
Belle slapped his arm with the back of her hand.  
  
“Yes. Here at Granny’s, twenty years from today. What d’you say?”  
  
He nodded his head. “Sure. I’ll be here.”  
  
“Good. Me, too.”  
  
They’d stayed in sporadic touch for about two years, but then he was shipped off to his aunts with nothing but the clothes on his back and, hell, no one tells a fifteen year-old about forwarding addresses. How was he to know? He’d been so caught up in his own shit that it was months until he’d realized he hadn’t heard from Belle and by then it was too late. His dad had disappeared. Rum’s stuff had been trashed by their old landlord and with it Belle’s address, her phone number, and the letters she’d written. He may as well have dropped off the face of the earth. All he had left was his promise and he would be damned if he would throw that away, too.  
  
It was going on ten and the weather was beginning to turn. Rum debated whether to head inside the diner for another cup of coffee and maybe a slice of pie to keep his stomach from giving an impromptu street performance, or moving on - not just from the bench, but with with his life.  
  
Ridiculous to think that the promise meant as much to Belle as it did to him. She was probably married by now, maybe with a kid or two and a degree with important sounding letters following her name. She’d always been well liked. People loved Belle and who wouldn’t? She was smart and funny and beautiful. Ridiculous to wait here. Ridiculous to hope.  
  
He sat there thinking about getting up. He was going to do it. He would stand up, dust the chipped paint of the bench from the back of his trouser and move on - after a meaningful night spent at the Rabbit Hole and a bottle of whiskey. Any minute now he would do it.  
  
Any minute.  
  
He was hunched down with his elbows on his knees when he heard it, the slap-slap-slapping sound of heels on concrete as someone in a hurry rounded the corner and came, breathless, to a halt in front of him.  
  
Rum’s mouth went dry as he looked up at the woman standing in front of him. The hair was different, longer and blown out straighter than she’d used to wear it and the freckles were hidden under a discreet layer of makeup, but those eyes. Those beautiful blue eyes that he’d missed so damn much… They were the same.  
  
“Belle?” he asked incredulously.  
  
She beamed at him, teary-eyed and laughing all at once. She held out a trembling hand to him and he wondered, just then, what he must look like to her and if she didn’t regret coming after all.  
  
“Yes! Rum? I can’t believe you’re here!” She sounded relieved, as if the whole thing want some made up play in her head for twenty years.  
  
Rum knew exactly how she felt.  
  
He stood up, taking her hand gently before pulling her into his arms, wrapping himself around her as much as he could. “Are you kidding,” he muttered into her neck. “I would wait forever for you.”  
  
She hugged him tighter, closer, harder and he’d just registered a trace of her rose scented perfume before her whisper in his ear distracted him.  
  
“Let’s make sure you don’t have to wait that long.”


	6. Special Delivery

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Forzaouat asked: 28. Knocking at the wrong door AU.

There was nothing wrong with sitting in his study at two o'clock in the afternoon getting quietly drunk, Gold thought to himself as he poured what would be the first of many drinks that afternoon. He’d waited until his business was concluded at least before closing shop and heading home to wallow in his misery. He’d spent an hour sorting through his tie collection sorting them by color and then by material before the weight of the date forced him to give that up for lost and get drunk.

He’d gotten started an entire half-hour later than the year before and for that he patted himself on the back, congratulating himself on his restraint as he sipped the cheap whiskey. He didn’t deserve the good stuff in his liquor cabinet – not today. Today was reserved for the booze that got him drunk the fastest with the added guarantee of a crippling headache in the morning.

He coughed as the sharp, bitter alcohol slid down his throat leaving a fiery trail that felt like he was drinking knives. It was like swallowing napalm.

Or his pride.

The first tumblerful was followed by another and he was just pouring the third when the doorbell rang. He was just feeling the buzz, he wasn’t drunk — not yet — but the alcohol was dulling him around the edges just a bit. He could probably just ignore whoever it was that was at the door, but they had rung again.

Oh good, and now they were knocking.

With a heavy sigh, he sat the tumbler on his desk and hauled himself out of his chair. Maybe he was a little drunker than he thought because it took him two tries before he was able to steady himself enough to stand without holding onto his desk. He bumped his thigh against the corner of the desk and he cursed under his breath at the pain knowing that there would be a livid bruise there in the morning.

Fine. Fine.

Everything was fine.

He could see the shadow of someone in front of his door and the knocking continued. He opened the door, leaning heavily on his cane, and came face to face with—

“Miss French?”

Fucking perfect, he thought as he took her in from the mass of curls she’d pulled back into a ponytail, her startling blue eyes and plump mouth, down to the baggy work uniform she wore and boots on her tiny feet. He didn’t know they made work boots that small. She was holding a small bouquet of flowers. Her smile, at first bright and cheerful, fell a bit when he opened the door.

Well, he’d already hit rock bottom. May as well get the shovel and dig.

“May I help you?” he asked, enunciating each word clearly. He wasn’t drunk, but he did have an accent that made itself known when he … when he indulged.

Confusion flit across her face, the blue of her eyes standing out clearly and he squirmed as if they saw straight through him and read the guilt that was embedded into his heart.   
  


“Mr. Gold?” She looked down at the flowers in her hand before glancing away, eyes flitting everywhere, taking in everything. “You, um, have a delivery.”

He shook his head. “Must be some mistake. No one would send me flowers.” It was just fucking brilliant really. A wrong delivery today of all days. And fucking flowers to boot. Maybe he’d get lucky and someone would misdirect a pizza his way later. He was just closing the door in her face, beautiful and concerned, though he didn’t know why should would be.

“No, wait!”

She stuck her foot in the doorway and he stopped himself just before slamming her foot in the door.

“It clearly has your address on it,” she said, showing him the address on the card.

It took him a moment for his eyes to focus. “So it does,” he agreed, wondering who would be so cruel as to send flowers to him. There was a list a mile long if he’d care to sit down and make one. “Well. Thank you.” He made to close the door once more, but her foot was still in the way.

He looked down at her with a frown. “Your foot, Miss French.”

“What of it?”

“It’s in my way.”

“But I haven’t given you the flowers. You’re supposed to take them.” She shoved the flowers at him, obviously confused by the way he didn’t reach out to take them from her.

“I don’t want them,” he said, nudging her foot with his trying to scoot it past the doorjamb enough so he could finally shut the door and get back to his self hate. It was rude of her to insist on making a delivery he didn’t want or ask for. “You can take them to the hospital.” He’d read that once before. That people could refuse flowers and donate them instead. He felt generous. And irritated at the way she wasn’t cooperating.

“Mr. Gold, are you okay?” she asked him, shoving back at him with her boot.

His shoulders slumped. “Why would you think that?”

She licked her lips and he followed that motion with his eyes before remembering that he was a cranky, horrible person who didn’t deserve flowers or friendship or… lips. Anyone else’s lips. Hers were especially off limits.

“Well,” she began. “You’re behaving really weirdly, if you don’t mind my saying so…”

He shrugged.

“And you lost your tie…”

He nodded. He’d put it away with the rest (dark blue, silk) when he was stalling.

“And… I’m sorry, Mr. Gold, but you smell like cheap alcohol and it’s two forty in the afternoon.” She closed her mouth with a snap, worry clearly written across her features and Gold felt even worse for it. He piled that on top of the rest of his feelings like a cherry on top of a guilt sundae.

He stood there waiting for more before lowering his gaze back to her booted foot still trespassing on his property.

“Are you okay?” she asked again.

He took in a deep shuddering breath and let it out slowly. “No, Miss French. I’m not okay. I am never okay on Bae’s birthday and whoever sent those flowers knows it.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I don’t expect you to understand, Miss French. I don’t fully understand it myself.”

She sighed heavily and looked back at where her delivery van was parked. She glanced back at him, then down at the flowers in her hand. “Look, do you need company?”

“I… what?”

“Someone to talk to?”

He scrunched his face in confusion. “Haven’t I said enough?”

She smiled at him, just a fleeting lift of the corners of her mouth but it was enough to qualify as a smile. “You’ve barely said anything, Mr. Gold.” She nudged his foot again with hers. “Come on. Let me in.” She put the flowers down on the porch and held out her empty hands. “I’ll leave these here. You don’t even have to look at them.”

He stood back, astonished at himself as he let her walk into his home. She smelled of flowers, no surprise given her job. He was definitely drunk, there was no way he’d let anyone in if he was sober.

He swung the door shut and watched her standing in his hallway with her hands tucked into her back pockets and looking at all the pictures he had hung on the wall. And leaning up against it. Okay, maybe she didn’t belong there and maybe she was just being kind to an old, drunk monster, but she smiled at him kindly and reached out a hand to him, which he took.

He led her to his parlor, away from his liquor cabinet, and sat her down on the settee. She looked at him expectantly.

“Have I ever told you about my son Bae?” he began.


	7. Hey There

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dooblydon't and Nevermore913 requested #10 high school popular kid/nerd au

“Is there something wrong with your lunch?”

Startled, William Gold looked up from his book with an exasperated looks his face. Belle French was hovering over him, craning her neck so that she could read what was printed on the pages.

“What?”

“Your lunch. You spend all your lunch breaks reading. I’ve never seen you eat.”

William quickly glanced over her shoulder. Surely she wasn’t speaking to him. There had to be people watching him, filming it probably. He’d wind up humiliated and pissed on You Tube. This person, this cheerleader, this _Belle_ was far too beautiful, too cheerful, too popular to be seen with him.

There weren’t any cameras that he could see and as far as he could tell no one was paying them any attention.

“You’ve been watching me?” he asked, glad that his voice hadn’t cracked, something that he had long outgrown unless he was under immense stress. Such as a very pretty girl with startling blue eyes speaking to him with an accent he wouldn’t soon forget.

To his surprise, she blushed becomingly, looking down at her feet before bringing her eyes back up to him.

“Sort of,” she said. “I’ve noticed you read a lot, but I’ve never seen you eat.”

“You said that already.”

She gave him a wide grin. “I did, but you didn’t answer.” She sat down on the step next to him just as happy as you please.

He scooted over to give her some room.

William didn’t know what to say. He could tell her the truth, that he didn’t have money for lunch. Heck, he rarely ate breakfast and dinner would be something scooped out of a tin while he competed his homework, but why spoil that smile? It was freely given and he didn’t think he wanted to be the one to make it disappear.

“You’re in my Calculous class,” she said as if he wasn’t already perfectly aware of that fact.

He nodded, waiting for her to get to the point. Belle French was smart, but Calculus was difficult even for smart people. Maybe she needed a tutor. That would explain her sudden noticing of his existence.

Her smile faltered a bit. “Um. So, I was thinking, maybe we could… study. Together?”

_Is that what they call it_ , William wondered absently. He itched all over under her stare. It was really disorienting being stared at like that and he slid the book closer to his stomach to cover up anything embarrassing that might arise.

“You mean me?”

“Who else?” she asked with a helpless shake of her head. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you since you arrived in town, but you never go to the cafeteria.”

Well, this was different.

“But you knew I would be here,” he pointed out.

She hummed a bit. “But you’re reading. I _hate_ it when people interrupt me so I just… walk away after checking up on you.”

He flushed. Actually felt his face turn red and, even though he knew it wasn’t a pretty sight, at least the blood was flowing up rather than down.

“But today…”

She bit her lip in a way that reversed the blood flow in William’s body. “Well, what can I say? I got tired of waiting.”

* * *

 

 

_**[ashadeofpemberley](https://ashadeofpemberley.tumblr.com/)** asked:_

_HeyThere!verse- How did the study session go between Gold and Belle? Did they ever go on a proper date afterwards?_

 

 

“So I was wondering…” Belle said, before trailing off.

William looked up from his calculus homework, shaking his long hair out of his face. “Yeah?”

“Nothing, it’s stupid,” she said with a shake of her head.

“Nothing you say is stupid,” he told her.

Belle pulled at a lock of hair, twirling it in her fingers, a nervous habit he’d learned to recognize. “It’s just… we’ve been studying together for three months now,” she began, looking at her lap.

He leaned over trying to see her eyes, but she kept them averted. “And?”

“And I was wondering…’” She took a deep breath then blurted, “why haven’t you asked me out?”

William blinked and sat up straighter. He didn’t know what that meant. Did she want to go out with him or was she wondering why he’d never hit on her? One or the other, but which one? “I guess… it’s because you’re my friend,” he said slowly.

She bit her lip and looked away. “Oh. I see.” She nodded to herself and her hair twirling became more pronounced.

William knew that was the wrong answer, but he didn’t know how to tell her that he’d had a crush on her since she plopped herself down next to him in the library and took over his life and that the only reason why he hadn’t said anything about it was because he didn’t want to damage their relationship with his selfishness.  

“Hey, Belle,” he said, suddenly brave.

She glanced at him, miserably. “Yeah?”

“You wanna- you wanna go out Friday? Like on a date?” he asked her, his stomach tied up in knots and ready to liquify at the first sign of rejection.

She beamed at him. “I’d love to!”

 


	8. Roommates AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous asked for #8 Roommates AU

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> January 2015 Prompts

“The ad said you had a room to let?”

Mr. Gold stared at the woman in front of him, her blue eyes sparkling with curiosity.

“The ad,” he asked, his eyes narrowed in suspicion.

The woman held up a printed piece of paper with a small add circled on it:

 

> Roommate wanted $150/ month
> 
> En suite bathroom, full kitchen privileges
> 
> Off street parking, cable/utilities included.
> 
>  

His address was listed at the bottom of the listing and Gold resisted the urge to crumble it up and throw it back in the woman’s face.

“I’m sorry, Miss—”

“Belle French,” she said with a big, toothy smile and held out her hand.

He took it, gingerly. “I’m sorry, but I believe we were both the victim of a rather cruel practical joke.”

Her smile faltered. “I’m sorry?”

“What I’m trying to say is, I don’t have a room to rent. Someone put that in the paper as a joke.”

Her face fell with disappointment. “Oh. That’s a rotten thing to do,” she said. “I’m sorry to have wasted your time.” She turned to leave, shoulders slumped down as if she was ready to cry.

Gold closed his eyes briefly wondering if he was going to regret what he was about to say. He didn’t know this woman from Adam — she could be a serial killer for all he knew, or a habitual slob, or an incessant talker — but she seemed truly distressed. He thought of the empty rooms gathering dust upstairs.

“Wait, Miss French!” he called out before she hit the bottom step of his porch.

She looked over her shoulder and yes, he could see that the tears were barely kept at bay. “Yes?”

“Why don’t you come in and look around. I didn’t put in the ad, but I do have a spare room.”

Her face lit up and she came bounding up the steps. “Do you mean it?” she asked, with excitement, her earlier disappointment entirely forgotten.

“Yes,” he said, stepping aside to let her in the house. “If you’ll have it.”

“Thank you so much!” she said. “You don’t know what this means to me.”

Gold wondered how long it would take the cable company to come out and set him up with a subscription.


	9. One Night Stand

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> redbirdinwhitecage asked: whispers - FIVE: one night stand and falling pregnant au -

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I got two requests for this. I am sorry to inform you that I’m a little shit.

Gold cursed to himself as he shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot as he watched his dog get mounted for the first time. He glanced at the woman next to him, Miss French, the owner of the male dog and she seemed just as embarrassed as he was, which reassured him that he wasn’t the only one weirded out by the situation.

He didn’t know what had possessed him to find a stud for his dog, a beautiful Pomeranian he named Tinkerbelle, but it was too late to back out now that the contract was signed and the stud, Zoso he remembered, was busy at work, clearly enjoying his job.

He wished he’d taken off her collar at least. The bell she wore to prevent him from accidentally stepping on her, jingled raucously with a merry _‘tinkle, tinkle, tinkle’_ as Zoso enthusiastically copulated with his Tinkerbelle.

“The first day is always awkward,” Miss French said, looking at him with a chagrined smile. “But she’s doing fine.”

_‘tinkle, tinkle, tinkle’_

Gold cleared his throat and looked down at his shoes, gripping his cane tightly in both hands wishing he’d never ventured upon this business. They were supposed to witness the mating to be sure it actually took place and by the animals as stated in the contract, but he didn’t expect to be quite so discomfited. Exactly how did one make small talk as they watched… _that_?

It would help if Miss French wasn’t so beautiful or so young or so desirable. She breezed into his house wearing a short skirt and her dog in hand, full of reassurances and bright, pink-lipped smiles and he thought, “Well, what’s the worst that could happen?”

’ _tinkle, tinkle, tinkle’_

The worst apparently was that he couldn’t stop imagining himself mounting Miss French in the same manner, complete with collar and bell although he kept switching who was wearing them. He’d keep Tinkerbelle crated in her room, though. No need to have his mating witnessed to see if it’d take.

Fuck.

He shifted again and stared at the carpet, not quite looking at the dogs, definitely not looking at the beautiful woman next to him. No. He could see her legs. They were amazing and strong and he bet she could crush his skull between her thighs. He was willing to find out at least.

’ _tinkle, tinkle, tinkle’_

He let out a slow breath, turning his mind to the contract they’d each signed, the appointments he had the next day, the tenants that owed him rent… anything to keep himself from mortification in front of—

A sharp yipping broke his thoughts and he was about to rush the animals as Zoso started tugging away from Tinkerbelle. Miss French held up a hand to stop him.

“Wait, Mr. Gold! They’re fine. Zoso’s just knotted up, we’ll have to wait a bit until it goes down.”

“Knotted up?” he asked, glad for the sudden stop in the proceedings. He’d read about it, but the prospect had completely slipped his mind until now.

“Yeah. It should go down in about half an hour. They’re fine, really. He’s just vocal.”

“Okay.” He looked at Tinkerbelle, collar tinkling away, trying to drag Zoso backwards by his penis and cringed. Yes, that was a mood killer.

Miss French looked at him, brightly. “So, same time tomorrow then?”

“Yes. Miss French, that would be fine.” Their contract stipulated two matings during Tink’s estrus, something he was beginning to regret now.

“Please, Mr. Gold,” she said with a smile. “Call me Belle.”


	10. Partners in Crime

“Congratulations, Mr. And Mrs. Gold,” the officiant said, glancing looking up from his registrar with disinterest. “You, uh, may kiss the bride now.”

Belle Gold née French looked up at her new husband with a rueful smile. “Um…”

He bent down, hesitated, then lightly kissed the corner of her mouth, whispering, “There, now it’s official,” in her ear before straightening up again, tugging at the hem of his jacket.

Her skin prickled where his lips had touched her and she caught herself smiling like a goofball.

They were directed to sign the marriage certificate and then, within minutes, they were blinking in the sunlight wondering what to do next.

“I should probably call my dad” Belle said, uncertainly.

“He would appreciate being told his only child has been married, I’m sure,” Gold said with a tight smile.

“Well, he’s also expecting me to fly in on Saturday. I want to tell him to not go to the airport as I won’t be there.”

“There’s that, too.”

Belle took his hand in hers and held it close to her chest, cradling it. “I can’t thank you enough for this,” she told him, earnestly.

He smiled down at her with soft, warm eyes. “Well. I’d hate to see you deported,” he said, quietly.

“Still, three years is a long time to put your life on hold.”

“Nonsense. It’ll go by faster than you think,” he said with a funny look on his face. He opened his mouth to say something, but stopped himself at the last moment with a wry look. He took his hand back from her gently and led her to his waiting car. “Come on, let’s get you settled at the house and then… maybe a couple days up at the cabin? People will find out soon enough, we should at least pretend to get away for a honeymoon.”

“Oh!” Butterflies swooped through her stomach. A couple of uninterrupted days would be wonderful. “Yes, that’s a good idea,” she said with a shy smile. “I didn’t even think of that.”

He opened the door for her and she hopped in, pleased at how things were turning out.

“We can fill out your green card paperwork and have it ready to be filed by Friday,” he said before he closed the door.

The smile on her face faded and she slumped in her seat, watching as he walked around the front of the car. “I can’t wait,” she said, glumly.


	11. Painting Toenails

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Quinninthenorth asked: Gold doing Belles’ nails (it’s my headcanon that he does that).

Belle groaned as she adjusted her weight to her left trying to bring her leg up where she could reach it, before giving up in exasperation. It was no use, she couldn’t even reach her toes any more. She sniffled, feeling fat and useless. She had an urge to paint her toenails and now her stupid belly was getting in the way.

Being almost nine months pregnant sucked. She ached, she couldn’t sleep, she had to pee constantly, there wasn’t enough room in her belly to eat even if she wanted to since she got heartburn at every meal, her back felt like it was going to snap, and now she couldn’t even fit into her shoes. She thought she’d paint her toes as a pick me up – which was ridiculous since she lost sight of her feet months ago – but the acrobatics were beyond her now that she was as big as a house.

She sniffed again, feeling irrationally betrayed by her own body. Was it too much to ask to have pretty toes? It was time for her to use the bat signal.

“Adam,” she called out. “I need you!”

The sound of her husband thundering up the stairs was her immediate reply and he soon popped his head into the bathroom. “What?” he asked, breathlessly, the race up the stairs obviously taken the wind from him. “Are you okay? Is it the baby?”

She held up the small bottle of nail polish and pouted. “I can’t reach my feet.” It was pathetic, but it worked.

“Oh, Belle,” he said, and took it from her. He eased himself down onto the bathroom floor and placed a foot on his knee.

“I’m tired of being fat and ugly. I want this baby to come already.” she said petulantly.

Her husband was patient as he lovingly ran the brush over the nail of her big toe. “First of all, you’re not fat, you’re pregnant. Second, you’re not ugly. You’re the most beautiful woman in the world.” The tip of his tongue poked out as he tried to keep the polish off her skin.

“You’re just saying that.”

“No, I mean it,” he said, finishing the row of nails and blowing on them gently before switching feet. “You’re beautiful and I love you and it’s insulting that you would think otherwise.”

“I love you,” she said in a small voice.

The smile he gave her toes warmed her.

“I love you, too, Sweetheart. But you have to stop wiggling.”

“You’re tickling me,” she said, laughing.

“Because you’re wiggling. Stop wiggling and it won’t tickle. Oh, it smeared.” He wiped at it with a finger, making her squirm even more.

“It’ll come off my skin if I shower.”

He looked at her with a twinkle in his eye. “How will you get it off if you can’t reach your toes?”

“Well, I guess I’ll need help won’t I?”


	12. Mob Boss AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> winterswanderlust asked: mob boss and their sweet little flame au. Rated M.

Their mouths crashed together as months of pent up tension came to a startling head. Belle French: alluring, clever, dangerous; and the man who should have been her greatest enemy, Royce Gold: gruff, rough, detective.

Belle walked into Gold’s life half a year ago with information on her longtime boyfriend known around the underworld as “Gorgeous” George Bonnet, kingpin, heartless, deceiver.

“I never loved him,” Belle told the detective early on during a clandestine meeting. “My father sold me to him to pay off a debt. I’m tired of being used, I want to be free of him. Can you help me?”

Gold, losing himself in her sea blue eyes agreed to help her at all costs. Something he’d have done even if she wasn’t the most beautiful woman he’d even seen. Belle had witnessed several important events, one of which was the murder of Senator Leopold Schiff: do-gooder, trusting, dead.

Belle had provided vital information, fingering henchmen and providing details, dates, places they never would have learned without her. Her memory was perfect and her bravery was unequaled and Gold feared that every time he watched her walk away would be the last, it was only a matter of time before she was caught and then only God himself would be able to identify her as Gorgeous George’s trademark was to cut off the face of his enemies.

She came back though, sometimes for just enough time to slip a piece of paper with a name hastily scrawled on it; sometimes for as long as an hour if she was sure she wasn’t followed. Every meeting place was in a different spot if it happened at all. Belle was beautiful, bold, and off limits.

Now, after months of work, he had everything they needed from brave, beautiful Belle to put Gorgeous George and quite a few of his boys behind bars for good. His case was solid, his witness perfect, there was nothing stopping him now except for one, small thing…

Gold hitched her leg up to his waist, running his hand up her thigh, relishing the smooth softness of it before hooking a finger in her garter and twisting it open. Her mouth trailed wet kisses down his neck as he finished ruining her stockings letting them fall in a heap around her ankles.

“Royce,” she breathed as he found a spot that made her hips jerk. “I won’t go back. George is starting to suspect something.”

“George is a dead man walking,” he growled, wanting to rip the man’s name from her lips, tear the memory of him away from her. He pushed her up on top of the desk in their borrowed room and dropped to his knees.

She opened her legs, spreading them wide for him, accepting, needing, loving.

“I was told you would protect me,” she said when they’d had their fill of each other and there was nothing more to hide.

He looked at her, aching, wanting, devoted. “Yes,” he said. “I’ll protect you.”


	13. Bad Timing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> little-inkstone asked: #2. “this is probably a bad time, but marry me?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> June 2015 Prompts

“This is probably a bad time,” Gold said, gritting his teeth against the weight of her pulling him down. “But marry me? Left hand green.”

She looked down at him, through a curtain of hair that dangled in front of her face, the strain of exertion of holding herself up on nothing but two toes and her fingertips as she moved her hand to the appropriate dot. “What?” she said, panting from her efforts. “Are you serious?”

“One hundred percent serious, Belle. Left foot blue,” he said with a groan and then another as their bodies shifted, trembling and straining to reach the blue row. “Ow, my ankle! Why are we both so damn short?”

Belle had a toe just touching a blue dot. “Wait, go back to marrying me? Are you only asking me because I can put my legs over my shoulders?”

“No, I’ve wanted to marry you before I knew you could do that. Or, or that. Wow! Right hand… green. Oh god.”

They wound up even more tangled than before, their noses practically touching and their breaths mingling.

“Okay,” she said, looking up into his earnest brown eyes. “I’ll marry you on one condition.”

“Whatzzat? Right foot yellow fuck.”

“I’ll marry you if you win.”

“Right foot blue, oh thank you god. And if I lose?”

“Then you have to marry me.”

“That sounds fair,” Gold groaned out right before he let go and they both collapsed into a heap. “I win!” he shouted weakly.

“You lost, you cheat!” Belle gasped, picking herself up on shaking arms only to roll over onto her back next to him.

“No, I have to marry you now,” he said, giving her a soft kiss. “I win.”


	14. Wedding Ceremony

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous asked: Rumbelle #24 “our weirdo friends are throwing a wedding for their dogs and we both got dragged along.“

“There she is!”

Belle jerked her head, the shrill cry came practically in her ear and her attention effectively diverted from her story and brought back into the real world. Little Emma Nolan, six years old and wearing what looked like a Tinkerbelle costume with her dirty Crocs and a wooden sword looped into what was probably her father’s belt.

“What do you need, Emma?” she asked as patiently as anyone could ask when they were abruptly shouted out of a good book.

“I need you to marry Pongo!” Emma said, just as loudly as before, seemingly unable to grasp the idea of personal space. She grasped Belle’s hand and tugged until Belle gave up and got up off the bench with a heavy sigh.

She didn’t hate children, in fact, she rather liked them, but she also liked her books and she was just getting to the good part where the heroine and the hero started shedding their clothes… Belle sighed again and resigned herself to a five minutes (tops!) intermission before she could get back to her story.

“I’m fairly certain the great state of Maine prohibits inter-species wedlock,” she said as she was dragged along the path towards the lake.

She would finish her book at home, who cares how nice it was outside.

“No, you’re marrying Pongo to Perdita.”

Ohhhhhh. Well, that made more sense, Belle thought and sure enough, as they rounded the bend, there was Archie Hopper himself with the intended groom on a leash.

“Hey, Archie,” she said, ruefully. “How did they rope you into this?”

“They didn’t really. I normally take Pongo out at this time.” He pushed his glasses back up his nose and peered behind her. “And here comes the bride.”

Belle turned around and, with a burst of excitement in her chest, saw Mr. Gold and Perdita being led by his son, Neal, and looking almost as harassed as she felt.

Emma started singing. Loudly.

“Here comes the bride dog! All dressed in… fur! She’s wearing spots and da da da da da! Hurry up, Neal!” she shouted, jumping up in down, glitter falling all over Belle’s shoes and onto poor Pongo’s coat.

Neal dragged both dad and dog down to the pond’s edge where they stopped. Gold looked over at Belle, surprised at first then apologetically. “Evening, Miss French. Hopper,” he said, acknowledging the other man. “Um, Pongo. Sorry, Perdita hasn’t started her manners classes yet.”

Perdita was having none of it and shook her head wildly against her collar and leash. She yanked and yanked against Gold, pulling him closer to the water. He cast a frantic look at his son, trying to get his dog under control.

“Belle! Marry them quick before she gets away,” Neal said, tugging at her elbow.

Startled, Belle stepped off to the side, keeping away from the unwilling dogs. “Um… You two are married. Congratulations, the end.”

Emma’s face lit up and she threw up handfuls of grass into the air, mostly getting them into her own hair. “Yaaaay!!!! Now they’ll have puppies!”

Belle chuckled as she shook her head, wondering if enough time had passed for her to politely excuse herself and get back to her book. She stepped away towards the path just as Perdita lunged for her, wrapping the leash around her knees and herding her back towards Mr. Gold whose shoes were already an inch deep into the water.

“No, wait, Perdita! Stop!” he cried, but it was too late, Perdita had a running start and she was bringing Belle with her.

With a crash and an oomph and a splash, the the three of them collided and fell into Storybrooke Park’s duck pond, where Perdita tried desperately to pull them further out into the middle.

“I’m so sorry, Miss French,” Gold said in her ear and he tried to get his dog under control.

Belle held her book up over her head lest it get wet, never mind her shoes and sun dress, now soaked through and probably indecent what with the kids around.

“Um…” she said. “I don’t—”

Perdita pulled harder on the leash causing Belle to drop the book and she waited in dismay for the resounding splash, but Mr. Gold’s reflexes were better than she thought and he had it in his hand inches over the water.

He’d also let go of the leash. Perdita made a beeline towards the ducks cowering on the other side of the pond.

“When do Perdita’s lessons start?” Belle asked.

Gold smiled sheepishly, stepping back with a squelch, and handing her the book. “We were just on our way there actually.”

Belle took the book from him with a grateful smile and held it underneath her crossed arms. trying to cover as much as she could, which was useless as she was dripping from head to toe. “Thanks for saving my book,” she said.

“My pleasure,” Gold said, shrugging out of his jacket and draping it over her shoulders with a slight blush. He kept his gaze firmly at a point over her shoulder. “I will, of course, pay for your dry cleaning,” he offered once she was covered up.

The jacket dwarfed her and Gold was no large man to begin with.

“That’s okay, Mr. Gold. It’s something I can throw in the regular laundry,” she said, good-naturedly.

“Your shoes though?”

Oh. She looked down and realized they were probably unsalvageable.

“Just let me know and I’ll pay for a new pair.”

“That’s very kind of you, Mr. Gold.”

She never noticed before that his eyes had flecks of gold in them before. Then again, she’d never been this close to him before. He smelled wonderful.

“Dad!” Neal called out. “We’re going to be late to our first day!”

To her surprise, Gold chuckled and shook his head. “Kids,” he said, by way of explanation.  

“You know, Mr. Gold, the library has a few books on dog behavior and training. I’d be happy to, um, to help you. If you like,” she added, shyly.

He glanced down at her in surprise. “Really? I mean… That would be nice. I might do that.”

She smiled brightly at him. “I look forward to seeing you then.”


	15. The Birthday Suit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> regardstosoulandromance: Rumbelle food fight!
> 
> And
> 
> be-a-warrior-not-a-worrier: Nose boops Body paint suprises Tooth rottening fluff

Gold opened the front door of his home to the overwhelming scent of burning sugar and chocolate and smiled to himself as he shrugged off his overcoat and hung it up in the front closet.

It wasn’t the first time his housekeeper’s culinary attempts had nearly resulted in his house being burned down, and, he suspected it wouldn’t be the last last. He’d given her leave to bake a cake for her father’s birthday a couple weeks ago when she was fretting about keeping it a surprise and it seemed she had taken it as permission to keep it up with a near disaster every week. First it was the cake and then it was cookies for her book club after which she made another cake, three pies which bubbled over and started a small fire in his oven, five batches of sugar cookies with piped icing, and now, it seemed she was at it again.

At least, he thought, as he made his way down the hall, she was improving.

Belle had been busy. She was concentrating on some instructions scrawled on an index card in faded handwriting and stirring a chocolate my batter with all her might. He could hear her counting out the turns of the spoon under her breath, “seven… eight… nine…”

She was perfect and his heart leapt and plummeted then twisted up into a knot before pounding wildly against his chest. He was too old to feel this, but there was nothing he could do to stop it. He’d tried. He’d failed. And now he just accepted this thing, this crush he’d harbored for the past year and a half and tucked it deep inside where it belonged.

“What’s all this?” he asked, as sternly as possible, biting down on the inside of his lip to keep the smile from breaking through. Useless he knew. Belle had seen through him the very first week of her employment, but he tried his best to keep up the strict boss charade.

Startled by his quiet entrance, she jerked away from the counter sending metal bowls and a wooden spoon clattering and skittering away from her.

“Mr. Gold!” she said, pressing a hand to her chest, leaving a floury ghost of a handprint. She had a smudge of something on the side of her nose from where she must have brushed her forearm against it and her front was entirely dusted with cocoa powder and sugar. It looked like she rolled in her ingredients before she started. “Don’t sneak up on me like that.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, as contritely as possible, though he knew his smirk gave him away. “Next time I come home early I’ll send up flares.”

She glared at him, hands on her hips, before shaking her head helplessly. “What are you doing home so early?” she asked.

Gold’s cheek twitched and he looked down at his polished shoes, standing out against the floury floor. Why was he home? Simple: it was his birthday and he wanted to spend it with Belle.

Silly, really. She never stayed long after he came home. Just long enough to get his dinner heated up and on the table for him before calling out a cheerful goodnight and leaving. She rarely lingered, though Gold sometimes had the thought that she would stay if he’d invited her to. Naturally, he never did. Why would she stay when she could escape for the night? Why sit and eat with the beast when she was free to leave?

So he had this crazy idea that maybe he could eke out an extra hour of her company if he came home at lunch. Belle was efficient, but even she wouldn’t have been finished with her duties if he showed up at one instead of six. And, maybe, even if he’d holed himself in his office and didn’t disturb her much, she’d bring him tea and maybe, if he didn’t choke up, he would invite her to have a cup with him and perhaps they would talk and then, if she didn’t run off, maybe he would ask her to stay for an early dinner.

Likely he would just take himself to his office, close the door and stare at the wall until she left for the day.

He opened his mouth to speak, but what could he tell her? I like you and want to be around you and I promise I’m not a creep, but, if you let me, I will give you the world.

Not. Happening.

He shrugged. “Seemed like too nice a day to spend it inside.”

Belle looked out the window at the dark clouds threatening rain and lifted an eyebrow at him, clearly not impressed with his lie. “And you couldn’t call to let me know?” she asked, exasperated.

His heart sank. Of course she would want a head’s up. She probably spent the entire day gearing herself up to be near him even for a few minutes, the prospect of spending hours in the house with him probably set her on edge.

It was stupid of him. He should have just stayed at the shop and dammed the thought of a birthday tea party all together.

“I apologize,” he said. “You can leave now if you like. I’ll clean up the, er… the mess.”

“But, I’m not done yet,” she said in dismay, looking at the counter in front of her in dismay.

“Right. Well, then whenever you wish,” he said, feeling dull and tired now that his anticipated day with Bele had been shot to hell, already turning to slink away to his office like a coward.

He was being a petulant fool and he knew it.

“Wait!” she called out and he stopped at the doorway, turning his head to see her wringing her hands.

“Yes?”

She glanced at the counter then back at him, eyes searching his. He felt for sure she could see through him then. That she knew he had a teeny, tiny, minuscule soft spot for her. She had to have known, he had been bursting with it for months.

“You can stay and keep me company?” she said, and the way her blue eyes shone drew him back to her like a tractor beam.

“I wouldn’t be in your way?” he asked, softly.

She huffed out a laugh, shaking her head. “No, of course not. Besides, this is for you.” She gestured to the counter with the dripping bowls and the melted butter that was slowly congealing back into a solid state and Gold stared at it for a moment before he realized what she meant.

“You’re making me a cake?” he asked, awed. “Why?”

She gave him a look as if he thought he was being ridiculous. “It’s your birthday, of course I’m making you a cake.”

“But—” he began before he shut his mouth and stared at the woman before him. He wanted to ask how she knew and why she would go through the effort, but then he _looked_ and he _saw_.

Belle was staring at him, all smudged-faced and eyes bright, but there was a glimmer of hope that made his insides clench and his traitorous heart pound. He swallowed heavily, blinking quickly to drive the image away, bring it back to how it should be with her polite disinterest, but she was still there with a shy smile and a heart for the taking of only he could man up and accept it.

“You made me a cake?” he whispered.

“Well, I’m trying,” she said. As if it was a matter of course. As if she would care. As if he mattered.

“I—”

“You do like chocolate right?” she asked, anxiously. “I dug out my granny’s recipe but I’m having trouble converting the measurements without a scale and—”

He interrupted her, delicately swiping a finger against her nose and sweeping away a bit of chocolate powder.

He looked at it, marveling at his audacity in touching her before bringing his eyes back down to hers. She was blushing and she held a trembling hand to her cheek.

“Is that on my face? I’m so sor—”

He interrupted her again — really, he was being downright rude — but she was so close and she smelled like roses and chocolate and sugar and she was looking up at him with wonder and he knew without a doubt that his face mirrored hers. He brought his hand up, brushing her cheek with the backs of his fingers and the softness of her, the warmth, overtook him and he slowly leaned down, never looking away from her eyes lest he miss a signal that he was overstepping his bounds, even when he knew he was doing something he shouldn’t, but she wasn’t pushing him away or turning her head in disgust. Her mouth opened slightly, her breath quickening as her eyes grew wide, darkening and begging him to not back down. He couldn’t have been imagining this. It wasn’t just wishful thinking on his birthday, she must have felt something, too.

Their lips brushed softly and he closed his eyes against her inevitable rejection. For this moment, she was his willingly — no strings attached — and he savored it as he savored her. She’d been sampling the chocolate and the taste of it mixed with her natural flavor made him groan with want. He pulled her to him, but she startled and pulled away frantically.

“I’m sorry. I—” he choked out in dismay, panting and holding out a trembling hand to her, but let it drop to his side. He’d expected her rejection, but the reality was more humiliating, more hurtful than what he’d envisioned. He’d misinterpreted her willingness to be friendly with complete acceptance and he would pay the price for his impulsiveness. She would quit, and rightly so, and then she would walk out of his life without a look back and then where would he be?

“I just don’t want to get your suit dirty,” she said, fumbling with her apron strings.

He looked up through his hair. He should have had it shorn ages ago, but he’d never gotten around to it. Now it was blocking his view of her face. “What?” he gasped, in disbelief.

She whipped the apron off and flung it over her shoulder with a determined look on her face. “Your suit. I’m a wreck and I’ll ruin it if I—”

“Hang the suit,” he said, interrupting her for the third time. “I don’t care about it.”

“I like this suit,” she said, bringing her hands around his waist, coming in closer, her tongue coming out, quick as a flash to lick her lips, drawing his eyes down to her mouth.

“You can have it,” he murmured before crashing his lips to hers, leaving behind inhibition, forgetting that he was the feared monster of Storybrooke and she was the sweet housekeeper he’d hired on a whim. Because he thought she was pretty. Because he liked her.

She moaned into his mouth and that tongue he’d caught a glimpse of stroked his in a way that made his knees give out. He’d caught himself before he could fall and brought her up onto the counter, knocking over the bowls, sending them to the floor with a crash. A cloud of flour and cocoa powder puffed up from the impact surrounding them. She didn’t pull away. She pulled him closer, opening her legs wide to accept him and he fit against her perfectly. He pulled back, gasping, and looked down at her before a startled laugh burst out of her.

“You’re coated in flour,” she said, brushing his hair and sending a rain of powder down to tickle his nose.

He rolled his eyes up, stupidly trying to see his hair, but naturally it was impossible. “I’m surprised you could even tell,” he said, smirking. He glancing down, blatantly looking at her chest and… her chest. She’d just had her tongue in his moth, surely there couldn’t be any objections to that, could there? “I can’t say you’re in any better shape, sweetheart.

“Sweetheart?” she asked, pleased, scooting closer to the edge of the counter and sending a thrill down his spine. “I’m your sweetheart?”

“Hmm.” He nuzzled her nose with his. “Sweetheart. Love. Darling. Whatever you want.”

She bit her lip, eyeing him just as shamelessly as he did her. “I don’t want this suit for one thing.”

“You don’t?” he asked, looking down at the imprint of Belle against the dark woolen fabric. It was just as well. He would have it preserved and framed and he would hang it over his fireplace as a reminder of a perfect day. “What do you want?”

A soft flush bloomed on her cheeks as she considered his offer. She opened her mouth, pursing her lips slightly before giving her head a helpless shake and looked at him in the eyes. “I was actually… I was hoping that maybe I could see your birthday suit?” she asked, tilting her head in an adorable way that made him want to nuzzle her again until what she’d actually said pinged in his brain.

“My birthd—”

She looked at him sheepishly. “I’m sorry, that was crass, but I’m _tired_ of tiptoeing around my feelings for you and— what are you doing?”

Gold stopped mid pull, tie knot in hand, before dropping it, guiltily. “Nothing.”

She smirked at him, taking the tie and pulling him forward. “Good. Because I’m unwrapping you.”


	16. Last Straw

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> #1 “Come over here and make me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> July 2015 Prompts

That’s the last of the straw, Dearie,” Rumplestiltskin growled as he examined the empty basket beside his wheel. “When I brought you here I explicitly told you that your duties were to make me tea, serve me my meals, and fetch my straw and yet this basket remains empty.” He stood up, fist wrapped around a splintered bit of straw that he'd scrapped from the bottom of the basket, knocking over the stool in an effort to be intimidating.

“You also told me I was to skin the children for their pelts,” Belle muttered from her chaise, nose deep in a book. She was nearing the end of the story and nothing short of a dragon invasion would get her to budge until she finished. Just another page left and then she could start it all over.

He huffed, waving a hand dramatically in front of his face. “That can still be arranged. Just because I let you use my library doesn’t mean you get to… to… faff off all day.”

Belle turned the page, eyes rapidly moving from left to right as she read the last words.

Rumple leaned over and whispered, menacingly into her ear. “Are you listening to me, girl? I could send you back to the dungeon.”

“Hmm? Wha-?” she asked, absently. Three more sentences left.

“Belle!” Rumplestiltskin stamped his foot.

There! That was the last sentence, the last word, the last period and Belle closed the book with a hearty sigh and a dreamy smile. “Hmm?” she asked again, this time turning her full attention to her… employer.

“I told you to fetch my straw! I have been telling you to fetch my straw for the past hour, you ungrateful, foolish girl!” He stomped away to the table to check the tea. “And now we’re out of tea. I need my tea and I need to spin. Go! Go do your chores before I turn you into a toad!” He wagged his finger at her.

The end-of-book euphoria drained away to be replaced with indignation and it was only that which made her say it. “Come over here and make me,” she blurted out before she could think better of it, but it was too late. She’d said it. He’d heard it. And now she had to pay for it. She straightened her shoulders and waited for him to announce her fate.

Rumplestiltskin’s eye widened, the finger he had been pointing at her accusingly curled inward, which he now rubbed obsessively with his thumb. He visibly deflated  — even his wild curls seemed subdued. There was only one way he could answer her challenge. “Nnnggghhh,” he said before he shut his mouth with a snap.

Belle stood up, gracefully, shaking out the wrinkles in her skirt as she did so, refusing to look at him. “Excuse me,” she said, brushing past him towards the kitchen, picking up the tea tray along the way. “I believe I would like a spot of tea.” She paused at the doorway and turned back.

He was still staring at her, eyes wide and lips pressed together.

“Well? Are you coming?” she asked as she swept out of the room.

“Nnnnggggh!”


	17. The One With the Angst

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> #5 “Wait a minute. Are you jealous?”

“You’re going out with him?” Gold asked, incredulously, his face burning with anger and humiliation.

Belle shrugged, her expression withdrawn. “He seems nice and it’s not like I have anything else to do that night.” She shrugged, frowning a bit before shaking her head. She turned away, pushing a cart down to the reference section. The high schoolers always left that area a mess after school and it took her at least two hours to sort it out.

Gold took a step back as if he’d been slapped. Saturdays were their day. They had been for weeks and now she was admitting that he was nothing to her.

Goddamn it, that hurt.

“So I suppose I’m nothing? Just a placeholder until something better comes along?” he growled, following her as closely as he could. Not for the first time he cursed his bum ankle and the need for a cane. Maybe if he didn’t have it Belle would rather go out with him instead of that… that bulky, dim-witted prick. He wanted to throw up.

“What are you talking about, Gold?” she asked absently as she scanned the titles before sliding them back into their proper place. She turned her head, lifting an eyebrow.

He ran a shaking hand through his hair. “I’m talking about that idiot without two brain cells to rub together and your agreeing to meet him for drinks.”

It was unbelievable, really, how crazed he felt. As if he was standing next to himself, watching as his world spiraled out of control.

“Wait a minute,” Belle said, her face scrunched up in confusion. “Are you jealous of Will?”

Gold swallowed heavily. He could feel his heart dropping down into his custom made Italian shoes. “Jealous,” he scoffed. “Why would I be jealous of some thick-headed, meat packer?”

“I don’t know,” Belle asked, crossing her arms over her chest defiantly. “Why would you be?”

“If you think it’s because of you then you’re sorely mistaken, dearie,” he said with a sneer.

Her face paled and if he wasn’t so enraged - at that scruffy neanderthal that swooped in and stole her right in front of him, at Belle for not loving him, at himself for losing his temper and treating her like dirt — he would have done anything to make it right. As it was, he was helpless to stop himself.

“Why would I waste my time like that?” he added for good measure.

There were glistening tears in her eyes. “You need to leave,” she told him, thickly. “And you need to never come back.”

* * *

 

 

_#32 “I think I’m in love with you and I’m terrified.”_

 

Dear Miss French,

I write to you in the hopes that you’ll forgive me for my inexcusable behavior last Friday afternoon when I so rudely insulted you. I said that you were worthless and that was a gross and blatant lie. I had no right to insinuate what I did in regards to your private life. Your life is your own and, more importantly, none of my business. You were right: I was jealous. I am jealous and I have no right to be. I had long carried a hope that you would see me in a more romantic light than you so obviously do. I see now that it was merely wishful thinking on my part and misinterpreting your natural kindness for affection. Please, accept my apologies and know that I will never impose upon you again.

Yours,

R. Gold

P.S. I think I’m in love with you and I’m terrified.

-R.

* * *

 

 

_#3 “Please, don’t leave.”_

 

Belle sat at the side of the bed and held on to her friend’s hand, nearly crushing it. The steady rise and fall of his chest and beeping of the heart rate monitor beside the bed reassured her that Gold was still alive - barely.

She hadn’t really seen him for weeks - just glimpses of him here and there, but they hadn’t spoken at all. Not since he lashed out at her for making a date with Will and she kicked him out.

She made the date out of disappointment. She thought Gold liked her. Not just liked her as a friend but liked her. As a woman. Week after week went by and nothing, not even a hint to let her know that her feelings were reciprocated. A semi-standing lunch date at Granny’s wasn’t something to base a relationship off of and so she… she gave up. There was only so much a girl could wait before she had to move on. Making the date in front of Gold was a mistake, but until he reacted so badly, she had no idea he would even care.

Or that his temper was so vicious.

And then he wrote that letter, slipping it under the door of the library for her to find and, true to his word, he’d kept out of her way ever since, even when she’d deliberately gone out of her way to be in his.

Will was nice, but he wasn’t Gold. They struck up an easy friendship over mutual heartbreak. It turned out that Will’s ex-girlfriend had broken his heart and he needed a friend just as much as she did. Funny, really.

She knew Gold had probably seen them about town and she knew that he probably came to the wrong conclusion, but she hurt over the things he’d said that day i the library. She could forgive him because she now knew he had been hurt, but she couldn’t forget the way he treated her. She needed time to sort through her own emotions first.

It wasn’t until she got the phone call from Dr. Whale letting her know of Gold’s collapse that she realized how foolish she had been this whole time. A simple talk would have spared them both weeks of frustration and disappointment. Now he was recovering from a heart attack and she was left to watch him waste away without the ability to let him know how she felt.

“Please,” she choked out past her tears. “Don’t leave me.”

* * *

 

 

_#20 “You need to wake up because I can’t do this without you.”_

 

Two days passed and still there was no sign of Gold waking up. Dr. Whale didn’t outright say the word “coma”, but she knew he was concerned. She had no real right to be there and none to his medical information so she kept her questions to a minimum and kept up her vigil by his bedside only leaving to change her clothes and eat a little and check in on Ashley at the library.

Two days since she arrived, three days since he was found on the pawn shop floor. She wanted to scream, but instead she focused on speaking to him in soothing tones telling him everything. How much she cared, how much she hurt, how much she wanted him to wake up.

“You need to wake up because I can’t do this without you.”

Gold said nothing.

* * *

 

 

_#36 “I wish I could hate you.”_

 

He woke up to the sound of beeps and hisses of medical machines and the murmur of voices outside his room and he jerked fully awake only to be constructed with the tubes and wires connected to his body.

He didn’t know how he got there. He had no idea of his condition other than he felt sore and tired and old, nothing really new, but those feelings were magnified now that he realized where he was.

Alone in the hospital. Again.

No, not quite alone he realized as a soft snoring made itself known over the various hospital sounds. He turned his head, wondering who would sit by his side in the middle of the night.

Belle.

She must have sensed something or perhaps it was the change in his heart rate that alerted her to his awakening because she opened her red-rimmed eyes then quickly sat up.

“You’re awake!” she said and he knew then that she must have been exhausted beyond reason because Belle never stated the obvious like that. She hated it.

Gold wanted to respond, but he’d been put on a ventilator. Everything was taped down and he’d never felt so helpless in his life. He hated being weak. Hated that Belle had seen him like this and he reached up to pull it out when she stopped him with a soft hand on his arm.

“Don’t.” She bit her lip, eying the call button before giving him a wobbly smile. “You had a heart attack. Dr. Whale said you need the oxygen. Do you understand?”

Hang Dr. Whale! But he nodded his head anyway because yes, he understood. His body failed him. He was old and decrepit and Belle was kind enough to set aside her indifference and sit by his side. He could be grateful for that at least.

Belle sighed deeply, looking at him with worried eyes. “You gave us a scare,” she said.

Who was “us”? Her and Will or was it an “us” that encompassed the population in general. The idea was laughable. No one he knew would care if he died that minute.

His eyes never left her face. It had been so long since he’d been this close to her. Weeks of loneliness of his own making. He supposed she would leave now that she knew he was recovering so he spent every second memorizing every beautiful feature lingering at her lips and cheeks before meeting her eyes once more. She already knew how he felt about her, there was no need to hide it any more.

Her face scrunched up, close to tears and he made a sound deep in his throat, reaching out to her, but she just held up a hand and shook her head at him.

He dropped his arm heavily on the bed, hurt once more that she wouldn’t even let him comfort her.

Instead she lay her head on the side rail looking defeated and worn. “I wish I could hate you,” she whispered. “But I can’t. I love you too much.”

The shock of it sent the nurses scurrying into the room in the fear that he’d had another cardiac arrest.

* * *

 

 

_#47 “No one needs to know.”_

 

His recovery went faster than the doctors expected, but what they didn’t account for was Belle’s influence on the irascible man. They didn’t think that the man, so feared and scorned in town, could be bossed about by a slip of a woman, but she managed to get him to comply with every stipulation, every strict rule he had to follow in order to get him back on his feet once more.

It was the day of his discharge, when Belle had gone into the library for a few hours before coming back to help him home, that Gold learned the awful truth.

“And there’s no hope,” he asked, despondently.

“There’s always hope, Mr. Gold but unless you significantly change your lifestyle, you’re living on borrowed time.”

“We’re all living on borrowed time, doctor,” he replied, but he understood. “How long do you think?”

The doctor breathed in and let it out in one, long breath. “I can’t say. Maybe six months. Maybe ten years if you’re lucky.”

Gold knew that ten years would be only if he kept himself holed up in his house and did nothing for the rest of his miserable existence. He thought of Belle’s smiling eyes and the tentative repairs they were making on their relationship. Better six months of bliss than ten years of nothing.

“I understand,” he said, finally.

“Would you like me to be here when Miss French comes in? In case she has any questions for me?”

Gold smiled bitterly, envisioning the burden Belle would take on if she knew of his condition. He couldn’t do that to her. He couldn’t place such a hardship upon her shoulders. Not when she had her own life to live. He would be grateful for every moment she gave to him, but he wouldn’t make her play nursemaid to a dying man.

“No,” he replied. “No one needs to know.”

* * *

 

 

_#26 “I got you a present.”_

 

Four months so far and he was feeling fine. He wasn’t expecting to hit the six month mark and then keel over — he was aiming for a year at least. Eighteen months if he was lucky. He was going to fight for a longer life, but not at the expense of actually living.

He exercised more, ate at Granny’s less. Belle motivated him just by being there. She had taken it upon herself to have lunch with him nearly every day, checking that he took his medication — which he did gladly — and that he was eating properly — which was done with less enthusiasm, but with little fuss.

He delegated his rental properties to an agency that took care of everything for him. He no longer had to collect rents, no longer had to intimidate people into paying what they owed, it was all out-sourced for him now. His pawnshop operated three days a week without a significant drop in his income. Truly, he was a lucky man.

Four months now and he was holding on just fine. He felt better than he had in years and if he sometimes grew melancholy, he thought he could be excused.

He grew closer to Belle during his convalescence and, once he was recovered, he began to openly show his affection, something he now knew he could have done all along, only his cowardice preventing him before.

He felt some guilt for not disclosing his diagnosis to Belle, and at times, when things were quiet and they were sitting on the swing on his front porch, he would come close to telling her the full truth. But then she would look at him with her beautiful blue eyes shining in the moonlight and he could never bring himself to destroy that light. It was a paltry excuse, but he hated the thought of destroying what little happiness they had left.

Except for a sizable amount to his personal assistant Dove and a few charities he supported, he left everything he owned to Belle. He knew she would be sad when he passed, but he also knew without a doubt that she was an affectionate person, made to love and be loved, and someday she would find someone new to begin again. It hurt, but only in the way the distant memory of an old injury hurt. He’d much rather his Belle be happy with someone else than be miserable and alone.

She was due for dinner at any moment to celebrate four months of recovery and four months of their new understanding. They had been little more than platonic friends the entire time, their affectionate play kept to cuddling and kisses only. He would have liked more, but he didn’t want to push her so he went at the pace she set for them, glad to still be in her life after the mess he’d made.

The knock at his door revealed his love wrapped up in an oversized raincoat, which was confusing because the weather had been warm and dry all week.

“Belle!” he said, stepping back to let her in. She had a key, but she refused to use it when he was home. “Please, come in, sweetheart.”

She stepped in, wearing a ridiculously pair of high heels that made his mouth water at the sight, and went straight for the sitting room in the back.

Gold followed her, bemused with her strange behavior. She stood in the center, turning towards him when he reached the doorway.

“I got you a present,” she said, untying the coat, letting it fall to the floor, revealing her gorgeous and nubile body clad in mere scraps of lace.

* * *

 

 

_#35 “You heard me. Take. It. Off.”_

 

Belle’s lip a were soft and warm against his and the way she moaned when he tentatively licked them set his blood aflame.

Slowly, he thought. He wouldn’t have a heart attack here and now, but he had to pace himself before he had another episode.

Belle wriggled against him and he felt her breasts, soft and supple against his chest.

His inevitable demise may be in the distant future, but, right now, the real risk would be coming in his pants before they got started.

“Take it off,” she murmured, plucking at the hem of his shirt.

“What’s that?”

“You heard me. Take. It. Off.”

Belle was a demanding little thing, and he found more pleasure in complying with her wishes than he did in delaying them. Before long he was stripped down to his boxers in front of her, his scars on display, his bony chest without camouflage, his knobby knees quaking as she looked her fill.

“You are wonderful,” she said, against all reason, and then she took his hand and led him upstairs to his bedroom.


	18. Fairy Tale

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> #25 “We can never be together” kiss

“Your Majesty.”

Belle turned away from the processional to face the man she would have chosen as her husband had not the King intervened and given her the wrong man instead. Her wedding was moments away and it seems she was not to decide her fate after all. She inclined her head slightly at his deep bow, then held out her hand to him. He was dressed for traveling, his clothes comfortable and broken in and soft from use, but it was his face that captured her attention. He tried to look happy, but, though the corners of his mouth turned up in a facsimile of smile, his eyes were full of unshed tears.

“I’m not queen yet, Sir Rumplestiltskin,” she reminded him, speaking softly lest her chaperone overheard this forbidden conversation. She had been sequestered for a week after her father gave her away lest she escape, always surrounded by watchful eyes and loose tongues. She’d tried to scale the wall, but she’d been caught and a watch was put on her both day and night.

“You will always be my queen,” he told her, sincerely, taking her hand and, lifting it up to his lips, he pressed a burning kiss to the tips of her fingers, holding them there longer than was polite. “And I wish you joy,” he said, hoarsely before dropping her hand gently. Another short bow, one last, lingering look, and then he’d disappeared quickly down the darkened corridor as the strains of the choral swelled to a crescendo signalling that it was time for her to enter the chapel.

“Lady Belle,” the old duenna assigned to keep an eye on her said. “The king is waiting.”

The longer Belle delayed, the more agitated she became until she was pulling at her gown in earnest, the delicate lace threatening to tear. Belle glanced at her then back down the way Rumplestiltskin had gone. She could easily overpower the old woman. There was still time.

Belle picked up her skirts and ran.

* * *

_#11 "I almost lost you" kiss_

 

Her dress was cumbersome, but she’d always been an active girl and, once she got a good start, there was nothing short of a stone wall that was going to stop her momentum. Unfortunately, a stone wall that was looming up fast.

She slowed down, bracing for impact as she tried to turn the corner without losing too much speed. She bounced off the wall, the delicate lace on her dress tearing like cobwebs, but she didn’t care for it one whit.

She had a knight to catch.

The approach to the stable yard was just ahead and she could hear the voices of the young men who were not of sufficient status to be invited to her wedding. The sunlight filtered into the wide hallway giving the air a golden glow that helped push her forward towards her love.

“Rumple!” she called out, desperately looking around the corral. Horses, squires, stable hands, and the blacksmith all turned to stare at her. All but the one person she’d hoped to see was trotting away at a brisk pace.

“Rumplestiltskin, wait!” she shouted again, but he couldn’t hear her through the padded helmet he wore.

She would never be able to catch up with his horse and she was fast losing strength.

Belle looked around wildly. She would have to steal a horse then, but how? She was encumbered by her wedding gown and surrounded by men who would stop her and return her to her unwanted fiance.

“Rumple, please!” she called out, her breath catching in her chest. “Please!” she sobbed before tripping on her dress, falling to her hands and knees. The tears fell from her face and mixed with the dirt, staining her gown irrevocably. It no longer mattered. Rumple had left her behind.

A whistling, whirring sound from her left made her look up, expecting to see the king descending down upon her, but it was the blacksmith swinging a heavy ball on a  long chain in his hand until it was nothing but a blur to her watery eyes. He aimed it at a point over the stockade wall and let go.

Belle watched, fascinated at the chain slipped through his hands and traveled up over the wall then started when a loud clank and a solid, accented curse reached her ears.

She scrambled to her feet, the blacksmith helping her up with a quick “Hurry, Lady Belle.” She would have to be swift.

Rumple was still astride his horse, looking down at the ball and chain in confusion and she called out to him one last time.

“Rumplestiltskin!” She waved her hand over her head as she ran, holding her skirt hiked up to her knees with the other. The lane was deeply rutted on either side and pocked with holes. The king should have been ashamed to keep his roads in this state — she would have fixed that if she’d stayed. As it was, she hollered as loud as she could, “Wait for me!”

At the sound of her frantic voice, he looked up, stunned at first, then the dawning of realization spread across his face until he beamed. He turned his horse around and quickly reached her, catching her hand in his glove. She laughed up at him triumphantly, leaning her head against his hand as it gently cupped her face.

“You came for me?” he asked, wonderingly. “Why?”

“Because I love you, you silly man,” she said, laughing at how absurd he was being. Her heart, sped up once she saw him, fluttered against her chest like a hummingbird.

He leaned down, eyes shining bright with tears once again, but the difference between then and now was like looking at the sun after a stormy night.

“I thought I’d lost you,” she sobbed in his ear. “You never looked back, I thought I’d lost you.”

“My sweet Belle,” he murmured into her hair. “I thought it was my mind playing tricks on me. I’m so sorry, my dear. I’m sorry.”

She lifted her face to kiss him, the first kiss of the rest of their lives, but just as their lips touched, the distant shouts of angry men sounded throughout the manor.

Rumple pulled her up behind him and she wrapped her arms around him tightly hanging on as he urged his horse into a gallop. She was leaving everything behind — her family, her friends, her fortune, but what she would gain was worth far more than anything she had here.  

“I’m never letting you go again,” she promised him.


	19. French Kiss

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> #16 French Kiss

“He slipped his tongue into her moist cavern, caressing the soft tissue with his own strong love-muscle, searching out every crevasse that made her moan, sampling her flavor and committing it to his memory. She tasted like tea and spices and something uniquely her own that he had yet found a name for. Her tiny, pearl-like teeth scraped his tongue and he pulled her closer until he could smell her ear, that soft, pink shell pushing against his nose like a downy rose petal—”

Rumplestiltskin ripped the book from Belle’s hands and examined the title carefully with a suspicious look before giving it back to her. She grabbed it, smoothing the now creased page with a shaking hand.

“If you don’t like the book, you could at least ask me to read another one,” she said with a sniff. “It’s rude to snatch something out of a person’s hand like that. Especially at a crucial part of the story.”

He rolled his eyes and stepped back, out of striking range. “I’ve never claimed to be a nice person. And that story is ridiculous,” he said, testily, voice raised to a high pitch he hadn’t used around her in weeks.

Belle looked up at him from her couch, mouth agape with indignation. “It is not!” she cried before looking down at the book with a fondness it didn’t deserve. “It’s beautiful.”

“No one kisses like that,” he said. “Love muscle? Moist cavern? Crevasse? Do you know anyone who can smell an ear?”

Belle lifted her chin up defiantly. “How would you know?” she challenged.

Hurt flited across his face before it quickly disappeared as fast as it had appeared and he pointed a black-tipped finger at her, eyes narrowed in irritation. “I know more than you, girl.” He turned his back to her, cross and hurt and bothered. The spinning wheel called to him from its place in the corner and he started towards it, determined to spin this night from his memory.

“Prove it.”

Rumplestiltskin stopped in his tracks and turned on his heel, eyes wide

“What?” he whispered.

“I want you to prove that real people don’t kiss like they do in my book,” Belle said setting her Her Handsome Hero aside and standing up to meet him face to face.

“I-I-I,” Rumple began before he remembered that he was the most powerful person in all the realms and disappeared in a puff of purple smoke leaving behind an echoing “No!” in his wake.

Belle stared until the smoke dissipated, a small disappointed pout on her face before she sat down on her couch, feet tucked underneath and opened her book to where she’d left off, but Rumplestiltskin’s words lingered on and she was determined on finding out exactly what it would be like to kiss another person.


	20. Back From the Dead

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> #24 Returned from the dead kiss. Swanfire.

 

She was beautiful, shimmering like a diamond, cold as ice, and deadly. That’s what they told her when she regained consciousness, dagger in hand, power at her bidding.

The power zipped through her veins like lightning and crackled at her fingertips. She could understand now Rumplestiltskin’s reluctance to part with it — she felt like she could do anything.

_Anything._

The body at her feet had been dead for weeks, but he lay there as if he were merely sleeping amongst the dirt and grass she’d dug him out from. She used her bare hands though she could simply part the earth with a thought. She wanted to hurt. Wanted to feel the bite of the rocks are they tore at her skin and ripped her nails until at last, his coffin was revealed and she pried it open with her bleeding fingers.

No power could bring back the dead, Rumplestiltskin said. Regina had warned her of the consequences of her actions, told her of what happened to Daniel, but they both of them were blind, bound by their limited powers and their narrow understanding.

What happened when the offspring of True Love gained the power of The Dark One?

You get a god.

Emma could see sound, could feel light. Her power was measureless, beyond magic, beyond enchantment. There was nothing she couldn’t do.  She knew the past and future and the present and, if she so wished, could restore life back to where it once was.

And she so wished.

She knelt in the dirt next to the father of her son and with a wave of her hand warmed the blood inside of him and filled his lungs with precious air. She brushed the hair off his forehead and leaned down to breath life into him, caressing his lips with hers until he moved, eyes blinking open like a princess in a cartoon and she would have laughed if she wasn’t so determined.

“Emma?” he asked, his voice cracked and hoarse with disuse. “What happened to you?” He squinted at her, trying to sit up, but she held him back with a gentle hand against his chest.

She smiled benevolently. “The Dark One happened to me, Neal.”

His face twisted in anger and hurt. “Papa? What did he do to you?” he demanded, struggling against her restraining hand with a curse. “Where’s Henry?”

Emma shook her head. “No, not your father. _Me_.”

She watched as his face drained of color, alarmed at how he drew away from her.

“You’re the Dark One?” he said, slowly as if trying to clear his ears.

She smiled again, showing her teeth. “I am and nothing can stop me now.” She turned her eyes towards him, shining with an inner power that saw straight into his heart. “Not even _you_.”

* * *

 

_**Anonymous** asked:_

_Swanfire Kiss!Neal- Did Nealfire assume that Emma had killed his father to become the DO when he first came back from the dead? How did that conversation go?_

 

 

Neal swiped a hand through his mop of hair, squeezing his eyes against the dirt that fell. He was still sitting in the grass next to his grave, hunched over and breathing heavily as he tried to come to grips with what had happened. “So where’s papa?” he asked.

Emma looked down at him, coolly, her head cocked in confusion. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t see a marker next to my headstone,” he said, slowly, anger bubbling just beneath the surface. “You couldn’t see fit to even give him that? You destroyed him and forgot him already? Where’s Belle?”

“You have the wrong idea, Neal. Your father is still alive.”

He looked up at her, confused.

Emma’s smile, if you could even call it that, flit across her face before it disappeared. “Barely,” she whispered.

* * *

_**[ashadeofpemberley](https://ashadeofpemberley.tumblr.com/)** asked:_

_SwanfireKiss!verse- What was Bae's reaction to Emma being the new Dark One? Will he try to break the curse? Will Henry?_

 

 

The book slapped down with a “whump” on the seat next to Neal, making him duck lest a blast of rogue magic took off his head before he realized it was only his son coming to confer with him.

“It’s called Operation Restore My Mom Before She Does Something Really Bad and Hates Herself For the Rest of Her Unnatural Life,” Henry said, his familiar brown eyes — so like his own — staring at him earnestly. “Or RMMBSDSRBHHFRHUL for short.”

Neal slowly sat back up, swallowing thickly. “That’s, um, quite a mouthful, Henry.” He heaved a sigh, looking over his shoulder just in case there were spying ears close by. He didn’t see anyone, but he’d spent an eternity dodging his father and then Pan and knew there was more than one way to listen in on a conversation.

He took out a pen — an ordinary, non binding pen and flipped open the book, scribbling in the margins without care of the Greater Story, which was nothing but shit to him. _You got a plan?_

Henry nodded, solemnly.

_What do you need me to do?_ Neal wrote.

Henry took the pen from him and scratched out, _I need you to kiss her. True Love’s Kiss! It can break any spell._

Neal closed his eyes, not wanting to see the disappointment on his son’s face. “I don’t know, Henry. I don’t think Emma and I… She stopped loving me like that years ago.” He looked at him, lips pressed shut for a moment. “I’m sorry.”

“But, she raised you from the dead,” Henry said, his voice cracking. “You don’t do that to someone you hate.”

Neal smiled at him sadly. “Sometimes you do though,” he whispered. He wrapped his arm around Henry’s shoulders, hugging him tightly, burying his face in the mop of curly hair for a brief moment before pulling back. “We’ll think of something, I promise. I won’t give up on your mom.”

* * *

_**[ashadeofpemberley](https://ashadeofpemberley.tumblr.com/)** asked:_

_SwanfireKiss!Neal- Have you talked to Belle about Emma's curse? She is rather familiar with the effects of it..._

 

 

The library was dark and silent and Neal wondered at first if it was even open for business, but the computer on the desk was humming noisily and he could hear the rusty squeak of the book cart somewhere between the shelves so he stepped all the way inside and shut the door quietly behind him.

He followed the sound of the squeaky wheel until he tracked his stepmom down in the stacks. She was leaning back against one set of shelves, staring at the opposite set with a pained look on her face as if she was reliving a memory that pained her.

“Hey, Belle,” Neal said, softly, not really wanting to interrupt her except he really needed her advice. “You got time?”

She snapped out of her reverie, smiling quickly at him. “Sure, Neal. What do you need?”

He tried to smile back, but it just wouldn’t come. His cheeks felt plastic. He dragged a hand through his hair, looking around until he noticed the set of chairs towards the back. “I, uh, needed to talk to you actually. About Emma?”

Belle nodded mutely and gestured to the chairs. “What is it,” she asked as she sat down, neatly tucking her skirt under her thigh.

He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “So when you were back in the Enchanted Forest. Back with my father did you ever… try to break his curse?”

Belle laughed, startling him as she nearly went into hysterics. Her face scrunched up as her laughter turned to tears and before he knew it she bent over with her head on her knees as she tried to get her emotions under control. Neal sat there, panicked, with his hands pressed against the armrests, ready to help her, but she’d waved him off as she got herself under control.

“Oh boy did I,” she said, wiping her eyes with the sides of her hand. She gave him a shaky mile. “I listened to the wrong person then tried to be a hero. Gods, I was such an idiot,” she said, shaking her head sorrowfully. “Got myself tossed out for my efforts. Spent years being locked up afterwards.”

“I hate being wrong,” she said to herself.

Belle took him by the hands, looking him straight in the eyes “Listen Neal. True Love’s kiss can break any spell. But this… this isn’t like a sleeping curse. This is the Dark One and the Dark One will fight you tooth and nail to stay inside Emma.”

He shifted in his seat uncomfortably. “So you’re saying we shouldn’t try at all?”

She looked at him as if he was a recalcitrant child that needed reprimanding. “No, of course not! I’m saying, you need your father.”

“But he’s…”

“In a coma,” she finished for him.

* * *

_**[ashadeofpemberley](https://ashadeofpemberley.tumblr.com/)** asked:_

_SwanfireKiss!verse- What does the Dark One (inside Emma's head) have to say about Henry and Bae?_

 

 

“They’re perfect, aren’t they,” the voice whispered in her ear as she watched Neal and Henry sleep curled up together on the forest floor. “So trusting, sleeping in front of you like that. So easy to kill. And you could. Just a slip of the dagger is all it would take. It would be a fitting punishment for Neal wouldn’t it? He left you to rot in jail, pregnant and all alone. He _deserves_ to die. And Henry? It would be a kindness to kill him and save him the horror of watching you succumb to the monster inside you.”

Emma scrambled away from the Dark One as fast as her new powers could grant her.

“Now I know you’re not really Mr. Gold or-or Rumplestiltskin,” she said in a shaky voice. “He would _never_ tell me to kill his son and grandchild.” She squared her shoulders as he tittered at her, pleased with his deception. Well, let’s see how pleased he would be with a fireball in his face.

* * *

_**[ashadeofpemberley](https://ashadeofpemberley.tumblr.com/)** asked:_

_SwanfireKiss!Neal- Does Emma still like hot chocolate with cinnamon? Do you ever bring her some?_

 

 

 "Hey,” Neal said as he set the mug down in front of Emma. Granny had filled it too full and a bit of the chocolate sloshed over the side, running down the cup in a thin rivulet, but the mound of whipped cream kept most of it inside. “You look like you could use a pick me up.”

Emma glanced at it before turning her attention back to the window. “You forgot the cinnamon.”

* * *

_**[ashadeofpemberley](https://ashadeofpemberley.tumblr.com/)** asked:_

_SwanfireKiss!Emma- Why do you make dreamcatchers? Does Neal ever help you with them?_

 

 

Neal shoved his hands in his pockets, biting his tongue so he wouldn’t say anything he’d regret. “I’m sorry, I’ll remember it next time.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Emma told him quietly. She picked up the cup anyway and gave it a tentative sip.

“You, uh, starting a business?” He asked, looking around at all the dreamcatchers that were dangling from hooks and every high place in the room. He could definitely tell she was improving. The ones be the window were lopsided and the strings weren’t pulled as tight as they should be, but the farther away they got, the better they were. “That’s a lot of dreamcatchers.”

She lifted a corner of her mouth, not quite a smile, but it was there and it was a start. “You told me once that they keep out the nightmares.”

He looked about again,understanding beginning to dawn. “You have a lot of nightmares?” he asked carefully.

“No,” she said, looking at him. “I am the nightmare, make no mistake about that.” She turned away once more.

“Then why did you make so many?”

Her answer was a whisper, almost too quiet to hear, “To forget.”

* * *

_**[ashadeofpemberley](https://ashadeofpemberley.tumblr.com/)** asked:_

_SwanfireKiss!Emma- Has Bae ever brought you things for your dreamcatchers (shells, feathers, etc.)?_

 

 

“Don’t touch that,” Emma said, slapping Neal’s hand away from the cardboard box filled with debris.

“Sorry,” he said, scooting away from the box and Emma. He shook his hand out at his side, her small “tap” had hurt. “What are you doing?”

“What does it look like?” she asked, mildly.

Neal shrugged as he peered at dream catchers that were dangling from tacks pressed into the ceiling. “Arts and crafts?”

“Henry brings me things,” she told him, her voice low and unhurried as she carefully selects a small stone from the box and examines it before putting it back. “Finds them on the beach and in the woods. He’s still a good boy.”

“Nothing we do will keep Henry from being who he truly is. Deep down he’ll always be a wonderful person.” He reached out once more to touch her her hand softly, but she flinched away. “So are you, you know. The Dark One isn’t _you_.”

She looked at him, her eyes cold and distant. “You should go.”

* * *

 

_**[ashadeofpemberley](https://ashadeofpemberley.tumblr.com/)** asked:_

_SwanfireKiss!Emma- Has Henry or Bae ever talked you down from doing something terrible?_

 

 

Emma saw red as she stared at the blood on Henry’s knee. Actual red, not the flowery figurative saying. It bled in from the edges and seeped into her vision until the entire world looked like it was bathed in the blood from Henry’s knee.

“Good,” the Dark one tittered in her ear. “That’s good. You’re feeling it now. The hate, the power. Your son is hurt and it’s all that boy’s fault.”

Emma’s head turned, eagle-like and just as piercing in her gaze. That boy, August Booth.  She felt her magic gather at her fingertips as she watched him squirm at her feet. He may only be a ten year-old brat now, but he had been a man not so long ago. He had been the orchestrator of a lot of her heartache. In a way, everything she’d gone through since she was born had been all his fault.

“Your predecessor liked to snail them. Turned them into snails then crushed their boneless bodies underneath his boot.Made such a delightful… crunch!” The Dark One tittered again, maniacal and jarring. He was too close to her ear, whispering such things and drowning out the others who were pleading with her, begging for August’s life, telling her it was an accident, that he didn’t mean it. Well, Emma knew better than most exactly how much good intentions were worth.

Absolutely nothing.

The Dark One circled around her, leaning over her shoulder once more. “But I think you know what to do with this impostor. Don’t you, Emma?” he said, nodding his head encouragingly at the boy.

“Yes,” she whispered. The magic swirled, gathering power and she envisioned him as he had been before: a puppet whose wood was dry and ready for burning. She would gift him with the ability to speak.She wanted to hear him scream.

She raised her hand to cast the spell when Henry jumped in front of him, blocking her from.

“Are you supposed to be Pocohontas now?” she asked, coolly. “She wasn’t in your book, but I suppose it was only a matter of time she showed up.”

“Mom,” he pleaded, his voice cracking, either from stress or because it was changing and that was another thing August had taken from her, the joy of being there when her son was growing up. “Please don’t do this! You’ve already forgiven him, don’t you remember?”

Emma huffed to herself, trying to think back. Had she forgiven him, this… this puppet?

“Mom, it was just an accident. I’m the one who ran into him, not the other way around. If anything I should be the one you turn into a snail.”

She blinked. “Henry, I would never do that to you,” she said, hurt that he would think so, but the magic had already begun to fade now that the Dark One didn’t have such a hold on her. “I love you.”

“I love you too, Mom,” he told her, truthfully. “You are better than this, I know you are.”

The magic flickered out, then, as if he’d blown out a candle. Emma stared at her hands in wonder then back at Henry, her son who was so much like his father that it hurt her heart.

He rushed to her, wrapping his arms around her and hugging her as tight as he could whispering, “I don’t want to lose you again.”

“No, Henry,” she cried into his hair. “Never.”

The Dark One disappeared from her sight.

* * *

_**[ashadeofpemberley](https://ashadeofpemberley.tumblr.com/)** asked:_

_SwanfireKiss!verse- The DarkOne voice recognizes Belle and is less than pleased to see her. Emma asks why._

 

 

“Beware of that one,” the Dark One said, nastily.

Emma whipped her head up seeing only Belle Gold walking down the sidewalk. She sniffed in derision. “Belle?” she said, incredulously. “She’s about as dangerous as a lady bug.“

The Dark One shrank back into the shadows, but Emma could still feel him, his eyes ever watching, his tongue ever scolding. 

“Don’t let her size fool you, dearie. That one is the most dangerous of them all.”

* * *

_**Anonymous** asked:_

_DO Emma verse w/ Neal: Have they figured out a way to wake up Rumple? Did he have another heart attack when he awoke to find his Bae staring back at him? I'm sure he feels like he owes her the world!_

 

 

“So how do we wake him,” Neal whispered.

Emma inhaled slowly before answering. “Belle’s tried True Love’s kiss, but that didn’t work. His heart is a blank slate now, neither good or bad or anything really.”

“What does that mean?”

Belle looked up from her seat. “It means he has the potential to be anything he wants to be. Just like always.” She got up, wincing as her knees cracked from sitting on one position for too long. “I’ve found a counterspell in one of his notebooks,” she told them over her shoulder as she retrieved an ancient tome. “I have all the ingredients for waking him up except for one thing.” She showed them the pages she’d had marked with an old ribbon.

Neal looked at her. “What is it? What do you need?”

“Something that has touched him from before. Before he was the Dark One, back when he was just an ordinary man.” Belle looked at him meaningfully. “I’ve looked for your baby shawl, Neal, but it’s missing.”

He ran a hand through his hair in frustration. “You mean out of all the stuff he’s collected in this dusty shop there isn’t one thing we can use to wake him up?”

Belle closed the book and set it down carefully. “Well, we have _you_ ,” she said, gently. “Just touch him.”

Emma came up from behind and laid a hand on his shoulder. “It’s worth a shot and if it fails, then you can go through the place and see if there’s something Belle didn’t recognize.”

“Aw, fu—” he began, but he slumped down on the seat Belle had been using and looked down at his father.

He looked peaceful at least. The stasis had kept him alive, but, according to Belle, that wasn’t a permanent fix. He must awaken and soon.

He pulled off a glove, flexing his fingers, but when he was just a whisker’s breadth away from his father’s cheek, he stopped short. Ignoring Belle’s plaintive call, he hesitated a moment, before leaning down to press his lips on his father’s forehead instead.

A bright, golden light burst forth from where his mouth touched his father’s skin, enveloping them in its glow before fading into their skin, a barrier invisible to the eye, but there nonetheless, bonding them together even more than they were before.

Rumplestiltskin’s eyes blinked open, looking about in confusion before settling on the man in front of him. “ _Bae_?”

 

 


	21. Angry Kiss

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> #5 angry kiss

“You _cheated_!”

The Dark One slowly lifted his head to stare his opponent from underneath the brim of his hat. “Say that to my face,” he said slowly. No one accused him of cheating and lived.

Lacey slammed the flat of her palm against the table, sending the poker chips scattering. “You’re a lying, cheating, no good son of a bitch,” she said, enunciating every syllable clearly, her accent thickening in her rage as she leaned over the table to get in his face.

He glanced down, boldly eyeing her cleavage, the tip of his tongue briefly flicking out to lick at his dry lips, before staring her down with a smirk. “And what do you propose we do about it, Dearie,” he asked, chuckling to himself as she flustered with impotent anger.

His smile was wiped clean off when she grabbed at his tie and hauled him towards her over the table, smashing her soft, pouty lips against his for a kiss that made his toes curl. He moaned into her mouth as she tilted her head and deepened the kiss and he took that opportunity to wrap his arms around her tiny body, drawing her closer.

Lacey was right, he was a no good, cheating son of a bitch, but he wasn’t gonna let that stop him from taking what was given.

“Annnnnd CUT! Beautiful take, guys, let’s set up again and get another angle,” David Nolan said over the commotion the extras were causing in the background. Immediately everyone broke character, relaxing after the tense scene and taking a well-deserved break.  

Everyone that is, except for Rum Gold and Belle French who were still going at it, table knocked aside as Belle climbed further into Rum’s lap.

“Guys? Rum? Belle? I said cut. Cut already!” He shook his head with a sigh and leaned over to his PA. “You’re getting this, right? I’m thinking it’ll be good for DVD easter eggs.”

* * *

David heaved a long, tired sigh. “I mean it this time. Cut,” he said listlessly and for the seventh time. “Come on you two, we’re not filming a porno.”

He shook his head and signaled to one of his assistants waiting nearby with a bucket of water. The resulting splash then indignant sputtering as Rum and Belle came up out of their lust fueled make out session were nearly worth losing the mike packs they had been wearing, neither of which were waterproof. David hoped they’d been just very slightly shocked before the packs shorted out.

“And that’s a break for lunch while we mop up and get set up again.” He turned away, disgusted. They would lose half the day of filming for this. “Go back to wardrobe and get yourselves fixed up, or fixed in general,” he said, turning back to Rum with a glare. There was a love bite blossoming on his neck even through the thick makeup he wore.

Rum, eyes still glazed over looked at the lovely brunette in his lap.

“Yes, wardrobe," she said in a low voice only he could hear. “We should get you out of these wet clothes and into something better. Like me.”

 


	22. Bingo Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous asked: IF you're up to writing Barnelle: Barney goes to Bingo Night with his mother and accidentally spills his drink all over Belle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> August 2015 prompts

The bingo hall was loud and smoky and crowded with old ladies and yipping dogs and Barney Thomson was sat in the back like a sullen child waiting for his mum to finish up so they could go home to a heated up tin of soup.

It wasn’t very far from the truth and that’s what had him sitting with his arms crossed over his chest and a knee bouncing out the time impatiently. He’d trusted that she would care enough to help him out of his… predicament, but he’d forgotten who he was dealing with. Cemolina was stubborn as a mule and just as pleasant to be around when she didn’t get her way, which was why most people let her do as she pleased. That left him waiting here for her, while the corpse in the boot of his car grew colder.

After a few minutes, someone called out “bingo” in triumph while an outcry of disappointment rippled through the floor and Barney took that opportunity to get up with creaking knees and see if he could get his mum away finally.

She was in the middle at her usual table, but he had been tucked in the back corner past the toilets and the bar, both of which were gaining long lines before a new game was set up.

He made himself as small as possible, tottering as people elbowed their way past all trying to be the first in line for something. Someone bumped into him on the side and he staggered, reaching out with an arm to keep from falling grabbing onto the nearest object which happened to be the soft breast of a lovely brunette who gasped in shock, spilling her drink all down her dress.

Bareny, his balance caught, but his composure shot to shit, whitened as he stuttered, “Fuck! I-I mean shit. No! That’s not-that’s not what I meant, I mean—”

“Your hand, sir,” she said quietly, but to Barney it had all the force of an air horn and he pulled it back as if from a hot stove, apologizing once again, or trying to at least, when he noticed that her dress was soaked through.

“At least let me buy you another drink to make up for the one I spilled,” he offered with a tremulous smile that felt like plastic on his face.

She looked up at him and her eyes were as blue as the loch he’d visited once when he was a lad at school and they’d been bused for the day — there and back — in an effort to expand the children’s horizons a bit. Barney had been told there was a monster in that lake by some of the bigger boys and he refused to leave the bus all day long, just glimpsing at it from his seat every now and again to be sure there was nothing to be afraid of, but never quite getting up the nerve to get off and get closer.

Barney gulped, feeling her eyes pull at him and the fleeting thought crossed his fuzzy brain that the monster wasn’t a monster at all but a woman and she had come after him after all these years, but he shook his head, blinking quickly.

“It was for my dad, actually,” she told him in a foreign accent. “I’ve been trying to get him to leave for hours, but he keeps putting me off.” She smiled at him, quickly, flashing pearly white teeth. “I should thank you. Now I have a good excuse to drag him out of here.” She gestured to her dress, which was dripping onto her shoes.

Barney, blinked again, understanding only that she wasn’t mad. “Right. Well, glad I could help, though I’m sorry for the, er, grabbing you. It was, uh, unintentional. I was bumped.”

She exhaled sharply through her nose, biting her lip to keep from smiling at him. “Yes, I saw that actually.” She leaned forward and up on her tippy toes and whispered, secretly. “You’re forgiven.”

Forgiven. That was a word he’d longed to hear after his recent stint as a homicidal barber and now this woman’s sudden presence was crystal clear to him. She was an angel sent from heaven. God understood he hadn’t meant to kill Henderson and Belle was His messenger.

Barney never was much of a religious person, but he would accept any help he could and, quite frankly, you couldn’t get any higher help than God Himself.

“That’s… that’s good, yeah?” he said, beginning to relax for the first time in years.

She looked at him, quizatively. “Yeah, I guess so.”

He nodded, thinking of what he might do with his new lease on life. “Good,” he agreed, before turning back to her, but she was already leaving. Making her way to her father who was down on the floor waiting for that elusive bingo.

“Hey,” he called out, feeling brave. “What’s your name?”

She turned back with another half-bitten back smile. “Belle. My name’s Belle.”

He’d always heard that angels were beautiful. 


	23. Cookie Dough

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> theladyofthedarkcastle asked: TMI Tuesday prompt innnnn idk pick a verse or drabble it or mhm: Rumple finds Belle eating cookie dough for dinner! :D

“What’s all this?” Rumplestiltskin asked when he stumbled into the kitchen one afternoon shortly before tea time.

Startled, Belle looked at him guiltily pulling the spoon out of her mouth. “‘M makin’ bithcuith,” she told him around the mouthful of dough before swallowing heavily.

“Making them? Are you sure about that, because you seem to be sampling the sweets before they’re ready,” he teased, poking at her with a scaly finger.

“Oh hush,” she told him, popping a spoonful of cookie dough into his mouth before running off with the bowl.


	24. Flash Fic Challenge

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You’ve been tagged in the Flash Fiction Challenge! When you receive this, you must write a five minute flash fic, no rereading, no editing! Any topic works, but you have five minutes, starting now! Then tag your ten favorite authors on tumblr. :D

Gold never liked the dentist. He had a long history of bad experiences and middling outcomes to last a lifetime so, when it came time for his twice yearly checkup, he resigned himself to spending an hour of getting poked with sharp instruments and nearly drowned by the water hose and jerked back and forth by ham-fisted hygienists who all seemed to harbor a grudge against him, before the dentist tried to sell him on braces.

“They make them so you can’t even see them now,” he said at every visit. “They would make your smile so much nicer.”

Gold didn’t need a nice smile or want one. Certainly nobody smiled at him, so why should he have cause to smile? He didn’t have friends and he found that his crooked teeth, when exposed, helped when he was collecting payments from those that owed him.

Today’s visit started out the same as every other. He waited in the front room for ten minutes before being ushered back by a short brunette with startling blue eyes wearing scrubs with tiny blue teacups on them and, yes, a gleaming smile that could only have come from artificial enhancements. She seemed pleased to see him, but, he figured, she was obviously new. Give her enough time and she would learn to hate him as well.

“I’m Belle,” she said as she led him to the chair. “Just sit back and relax while I take a look at you.”

Gold didn’t like the sound of that, but her hands were small and gentle and swift and her eyes shone like diamonds behind her protective glasses while she kept up harmless chatter about the book she was currently reading and before he knew it, she was done with the cleaning and he was free to go.

“Shouldn’t the dentist come?” he asked suspiciously.

Belle took the glasses off and lowered her mask. “Not unless you want him to. But your teeth are in perfect shape and so there really isn’t a reason for it. Shall I call him back for you?”

Gold stared at her, open-mouthed for a moment before he remembered himself. “No. No that won’t be necessary.”

She smiled again, and this time he noticed the sincerity behind it and how beautiful she actually was.

He paused a moment after he made his six month appointment and looked back, watching her set up for her next patient, a funny sort of ache in his chest. Then, before she could catch him looking, he turned and walked out feeling ten times a fool. She would, no doubt, hate him by then. Just like everybody else.


	25. Shipwrecked!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shipwrecked: We were on a three hour cruise, now we’re the only survivors.

It was the frenzied hand slapping against his face that brought him round. It began gently at first then became more frantic as he roused himself from blissful emptiness to the blinding force of reality and all the pain brought with it. He let go of the deep and dreamless sleep if only to tell his attacker to fuck off.

He blinked his eyes open then squinted against the hot sun overhead, scrabbling against the wet sand with his fingers before he looked for his assailant, but the words he meant to say, “Stop hitting me before I rip your hands off and use them to scratch my ass,” died on his lips when he saw that it was a woman whose startling blue eyes stopped the invective before he could utter it.

“Oh thank god,” she sobbed, leaning her head back as if to address the heavens. “I was so scared you died, too. I couldn’t be sure.”

He remembered her now. The pretty brunette with the ever-present smile and a book in her hand. He lifted his head to look at his surroundings, but moving made the world spin and he flopped back down with a groan. He remembered they both had found themselves on the top deck, her with the wind in her hair and him, well, avoiding the woman he’d brought with him. The sun had been shining and there were dolphins swimming alongside at one point, and this stranger, this woman with eyes as blue as the sky above, laughed as if there was nothing better than to be aboard that particular boat on that particular day with him by her side.

He remembered that he’d smiled back.

After that, nothing.

“What happened?” he asked, beginning at the obvious place.

“I don’t know. We were sailing and then we weren’t and the boat went under — everyone except for me and you…”

“No one else survived?” He blinked against the sudden tears when she shook her head, sorrow for the drowned shipmates, even that annoying woman he’d brought–no one deserved that awful fate. He struggled to sit up, the fire in his lungs and along his side bringing their situation to a sharp clarity.

“Are you hurt?” he asked looking her over for injuries, but, except for a long scratch down her arm, she seemed otherwise healthy. His side ached as if he’d been battered against the side of something hard - the hull of a boat for instance - but he could feel his legs so he must have escaped major injuries

“I’m fine,” she told him, looking at her hands.

“And…” he licked his dry lips, needing to be very clear. “Did you save me?”

“Yes,” she whispered.

“Why?” It was incredible that he owed his life to this small, brave woman. That she would rescue him - a mere stranger - was beyond his ability to grasp.

“Because,” she said, looking up at him, tears spilling from her eyes. “I didn’t want to be alone.”


	26. Marshmallow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> bellegold asked: "You don't like marshmallows in your hot chocolate? Why do you hate love!" + Rumbelle

****“What’s this?” Gold said, looking down at the mug placed in front of him with a sneer of disgust on his face.

Belle held her own cup in her hands, letting the hot ceramic warm them up before taking a cautious sip. A narrow film of marshmallow stuck to her upper lip before she licked it off with a quick flick of her tongue.

She’d been hired by the feared Mr. Gold at the start of tourist season, the leaf-peepers driving up by the hundreds to gawk at the trees doing what trees do and, as a result of the higher traffic, small towns usually did a fair amount of business, especially those among the coast as Storybrooke was. Their summers catered towards vacationing families, but the real money was made when autumn arrived. Storybrooke wasn’t a destination for winter activities — being coastal meant that there wasn’t any skiing to be had, so the leaf-peepers tided them over through the long winter months until spring arrived and the year began anew. Belle had been at the shop for six weeks now, her temp job having been expanded to last through to help with the Christmas season, but she suspected that, unless she found employment elsewhere, she was there to stay.

She enjoyed working for the gruff and solitary man. She got his sense of humor and the way he treated everyone with a strict fairness that grated against the community’s sensibilities. He had a reputation for being a miser and a ruthless moneylender, but, after working for him for even a few weeks, she understood that he had a big, caring heart underneath those stiff business suits — he just didn’t like for people to know about it.

“It’s hot chocolate,” she explained with a satisfied smile. “It’s cold out and I thought it would warm us up a bit, yeah?”

He glanced up at her before scooting the cup away from him with the tips of his fingers. “I don’t like marshmallows.”

A small, uncertain smile flit across her face. “What? Are you of the whipped cream and cinnamon camp? Seems like almost everyone in town is,” she muttered into her cup as she took another sip.

“No, I just don’t like marshmallows.”

“Fine,” she said, rolling her eyes at him. “Just pick them out.”

“No, I… I don’t like hot chocolate either.”

“That’s disappointing. I love it. Tea is nice and coffee will do the trick, but a good cup of hot chocolate on a frosty day is like… it’s like a warm hug from your mum, you know?”

He stared at her, face blank and unreadable. “No,” he said, voice quiet and sad. “The women that took me in couldn’t afford chocolate and they weren’t much for physical displays of affection.”

Belle’s mouth dropped open a fraction of an inch. This childhood confession of what life was like for him was unexpected. Here, the entire town was scared of of as if he was some kind of monster when all he really needed was a big hug. It was so cliche.

“They were cruel to you?” she asked, her voice tiny. The idea of anyone treating a child with cruelty made her heart clench.

He looked at her then, startled. “No. No, they were very kind. Just busy.”

“Well,” she said slowly, putting her cup down on the workbench before coming up to his side. “Today’s a good day to start don’t you think?”

“What do you mean?” he asked, looking up at her with a mild panic in his warm, brown eyes.

She put her arms around him, draping herself over his back and around his arms with her chin on his shoulder. “It’s a good day for hugs,” she whispered. “It’s like a mug of hot chocolate only better, especially when it comes from someone who cares for you.”

She squeezed him tight, never minding the way he froze up, never minding the shocked expression on his face and the way she could feel him swallow thickly. He was bonier than he looked underneath the layers of his suit and she longed to let her hands stray, but knew he would never stand for that, would fire her in a heartbeat and rightly so since she was accosting him in the workplace. He might very well do so anyway, but she suspected that, after a bit of scowling he’d just pretend it never happened. She breathed in his cologne and memorized the way his hair felt feather soft against her cheek and, when he relaxed into her embrace, melting into her arms like a marshmallow in hot cocoa, she stayed there until he began to pull away, embarrassed and red-faced and a gruff, “Very nice, but it’s time you get back to work, dearie.”

She stood back up, a shy smile on her face, and let her hand slide across his shoulders before it fell away. “Yeah, right. I’ll just, uh, go back to dusting then.”

He nodded, looking down at his workbench, stubbornly refusing to meet her eyes. She slipped out of the back room, but not before she saw him take a delicate and cautious sip from the mug of hot chocolate.


	27. Barnelle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous asked: Could you write some Barnelle fluff? Or smut? Or fluffy smut?

He didn’t know if the pretty woman was crazy or if she’d approached him on a dare, but he was of no mind to ask questions, especially when said woman’s tongue was shoved halfway down his throat, rooting around his tonsils as if they concealed treasure. Any sound he might have made would have been full of too many vowels and not enough consonants to be intelligible.

“Mmmmmmmmnnnnhhhhh?” Was the best he could do as he clutched at her pink jacket, his legs beginning to buckle under the sheer force of her weight and fuck it all if he was starting to get hard from all this excess and sudden stimulation. She had to have felt it, the way she was rubbing up and down his body like that and he tried shifting away, but she just kept coming at him until he groaned.

She pulled away, her lips breaking suction with a loud ‘pop’ and a string of saliva trailing from her lips to his. He stared at her, aghast and aroused and ready to catch her this time should she decide she liked the starters and wanted to go in for a second round, but she stepped away, blushing furiously, her hand reaching up to touch her swollen lips.

“You…” she began, gulping for breath. “You aren’t Danny,” she said, dismayed.

Ah, he thought, bitterly. It was a sad case of mistaken identity. Figures.

“Aye? ‘Course I’m not bloody Danny,” he said, irate now that he was proven to be, once again, not good enough and whoever this Danny fellow is was a) one lucky bastard for having such a pretty bird walking about Glasgow waiting to pounce on him and b) a bleeding idiot for not being where he should be.

Maybe her eyesight was just shite. Or she was fucking crazy.

“I’m so sorry!” she said, holding out her hand and her face looked as anguished as if he’d kicked a box of puppies into the river instead of joined in on an impromptu snog. “I was just… I was trying to meet up with him—”

“Figured as much, Miss,” he mumbled, shoving his hands in his pockets in a weak effort to take some of the pressure of his dick. Fat lot of good it did, that. It just pressed his hand right up against it instead. He shifted uncomfortably before giving it up as a lost cause. The humiliation was only making it worse.

“He was supposed to help me with a problem.”

“What’s that? Need a dental checkup or something?” he snorted, turning around to get as far away from her as he could. He was already running late to the shop and then he’d have hell to pay.

“What? Oh. No, he was supposed to meet me here at the… hey wait up,” she said, traipsing after him, her earnest face looking up at him. “I’ve been getting harassed, you see,” she began.

“Yeah? And your solution was to violently mank on some stranger in the street?”

“I wasn’t _manking_ on you now was it violent,” she protested. “I actually thought it was nice.”

He stopped short, giving a slight ‘oof’ when she bumped into him. “You _what_?” he breathed incredulously.

The blush was back, lightly dusting her cheeks and he remembered, again, how pretty she was. Made up for the crazy, really. Almost.

“I thought it was a good kiss,” she said.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

He gaped at her, his brain entirely shutting down while he tried to conceive of any reality where someone — anyone —thought him a good kisser and came up short, but then something she’d said pinged.

“Harassed you said?”

“Yeah. Keith. He won’t leave me alone. He followed me home last night so I called a friend to work up this little plan. He was supposed to meet me at the corner and kiss me to sort of discourage him. You look just like Danny from the back and I thought… well, I’m sorry. I just thought you were him.”

“That’s a daft plan,” he said after a minute’s thought. “Shoulda called the police.”

“I don’t want to do that. I mean, he’s just following me, he hasn’t done anything violent.” She looked towards the other side of the street where Barney could see a large, brutish man glaring at them.

“That the guy,” he asked, nodding his head at the fellow.

“Yeah.”

“As dumb as he looks?”

“Dumber,” she assured him, biting her lip to keep from smiling and for the first time he noticed how blue her eyes were. Scary blue, really. No one had eyes that color, he thought as he stared at her, leaning down towards her, marveling at how perfectly tiny she was. Tiny and perfect and outright bonkers. There was nothing else for it, then.

“Want another go then?”

Her eyes widened and her face absolutely lit up when she realized what he meant. “You mean it? You’ll kiss me?”

He snorted. As if anyone could turn her down even if she was loony in the braincase. “My name’s Barney,” he told her, awkwardly wrapping his arms about her waist while she hung her hands on his shoulders.

“I’m Belle,” she whispered before standing up on her toes, bringing her lips up to his.

“Well, Belle,” he said, glancing across the street to see the Keith’s face grow nearly purple. “Kiss me again, I think it’s working.”


	28. Lucky Break

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> itssandgirl asked: I prompt you to turn your current injury in to another rumbelle thing!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last April I broke my ankle. :\

Gold was belly down on the hospital bed, his injured leg bent up at the knee for the nurse to wrap, biting his lip in anticipation of the pain that was to come. He expected rough treatment and harsh words — the doctor had certainly been unsympathetic. Maybe some gloating over his weakened state. Instead, what he got was a soft, kind voice in an accent he wouldn’t soon forget and gentle hands wrapping his leg in cotton fluff before the fiberglass splint was fitted to his leg.  

He knew she’d introduced herself, but he was too busy feeling angry at himself to listen before she began her ministrations and now he wished he’d paid attention so he knew who was touching him.

“I just have to do some measurements before I cut the splint, Mr. Gold,” the voice said as she smoothed down any wrinkles before she broke out the tape measure. “Are you in any pain?”

Well, yes, but it wasn’t anything he couldn’t handle and he abhorred the idea of being drugged up in front of people he didn’t know.

“No, m’fine,” he growled, turning his head towards the sound of her voice, trying to get a look at her face. He knew everyone in town so why couldn’t he place who she was?

He could barely feel the press of her fingers as she gauged how big the splint needed to be and before he could lift himself up onto his elbows, she was gone from the room with a, “Back in a jiffy.”

He lay there for some minutes, his leg still up in the air, while the busy hospital sounds filtered into the room. He could hear the grinding of the fiberglass as it was cut to size and he hoped that the nurse didn’t chop off anything she needed. If she did cut herself, he thought, at least she was in the emergency room.

Then she whirled back into the room with a bright greeting, the splint fitted to his leg and roll after roll of bandages wrapped snuggly around his calf as she hummed quietly to herself, sometimes murmuring encouraging words to him as she adjusted his foot a fraction here, a fraction there.

Finally, she was done and allowed him to roll over again, helping him up as the weight of his splint threw him off balance at first. He stared at his leg, the large swath of bandages and fluff that nearly doubled the width of his leg surprised him at first. It was ungainly, but comfortable and, as he wiggled his toes at her instructions, he realized that the nurse with the lovely voice might be the kindest person he’d ever met.

He looked up at her, then, through the curtain of hair that fell over his forehead and saw the most beautiful, clear blue eyes he’d ever seen. He blinked, startled at being faced with someone so lovely without any warning and felt an embarrassing blush begin to crawl up his neck to spread across his cheeks. His own eyes hungrily skimmed over her face, noting the soft, downy skin lightly sprinkled with freckles over her high cheekbones and her full, red lips were parted slightly and looked as if she’d just licked them just before he’d turned over. Her hair was pulled back into a low ponytail that hung over her left shoulder in an auburn cloud of curls that he would have liked to bury his face into.

He quickly averted his eyes, feeling like an idiot, angry at himself for being rendered speechless in front of a pretty face. Looks never meant much to him. He knew all too well that a pretty face was only skin deep and that even the most beautiful people could hide the nastiest of personalities. But, after the treatment he’d received at her capable hands, he suspected that she was as beautiful inside as she was on the outside.

His eyes landed on a name tag pinned to her scrubs. Belle French, RN. Even her name meant beautiful. He nearly laughed at the sight. In short, she was unfairly perfect and he had to leave before he did something he regretted.


	29. First Response

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous asked: Prompt: Rumple's POV of Belle's recent pregnancy news. How does he feel about it? What did he think of HER reaction to the news? How does he feel about the night rumbaby was conceived?

It didn’t make sense at first. He’d been looking for _Bae_ not Belle. He willed the crystal to show him his child using every ounce of power he possessed as the Dark One, but the orb proved stubborn, only showing his wife having breakfast with the Dwarf. The moody one.

He despaired at first. He _needed_ to get to Bae. Needed to find him and help him return to Storybrooke. He couldn’t split his heart or give it to him whole. It was no longer pure and white, but filled with the dark curse yet again and he wouldn’t wish that on his son. He wouldn’t wish that on anyone. But he might be able to work out a deal. A life for a life. Either his own life or another’s, Rumplestiltskin didn’t care so long that his son lived. It was the only reason why he’d agreed to go on this fool’s quest to begin with.

It hit him, then. His son wasn’t in the Underworld at all, he’d moved on to a place that was even more unreachable than the Land Without Magic had been for three hundred years. Unreachable, but not suffering and his heart lightened perceptively when he realized that even as he knew that he had truly lost his son forever. But then, why was the crystal showing Belle when he’d asked to see his child?

The crystal slipped from his fingers when the truth washed over him. Belle was pregnant with his child.

He fell to his knees, gathering the broken shards with shaking hands, heedless of their sharp edges as he tried to mold them back together, but the pieces proved to be just as stubborn as its whole and refused his will.

Belle! Pregnant!

But they had only been together just last night and before that it had been, oh, it had been weeks. Months. Forever. His own fault for not being able to resist the temptation of cleaving himself from the dagger, but he had been so confident it would work. So sure of himself. Of course he failed, just as he failed in nearly everything he’d set out to do. He lost everything in his desperate grasp for freedom only understanding at the last minute that he should have told Belle from the very beginning what he was trying to do. Belle was his moral compass, but he didn’t want her to be. He wanted to do it himself, without using her as another crutch. She was more than that and deserved a man who lived up to her expectations.

He cradled the shards against his chest, the only tangible proof of their child at the moment. The conception was only hours old, but he loved the baby already even as he cursed himself for putting Belle in this position. Their understanding was tentative at best and he didn’t know what she would think about having a child with him when their relationship was still so uncertain. They’d never even discussed children and now…

He dropped the pieces on the floor, the glass was useless and dwelling on it wasted time. Time he’d better spend tracking down the others and finding his way back to Belle. She couldn’t possibly know yet. It was too early for that and, if things had gone on as normal - or what passed as normal for them - they likely wouldn’t have found out for another five weeks. No one knew except for him and he had to guard this secret until he was safely back in Storybrooke and with Belle again.  


	30. Say That Again?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> alias-sd6 asked: #61 rumbelle please! “I love you. I’m completely and utterly in love with you. Please don’t get married.”

“I love you. I’m completely and utterly in love with you. Please don’t get married.”

“What’s that,” Belle said, lifting her head from her book to peer up at him.

He smiled at her, tightly. “Nothing. Just remarking on the weather.”

She looked past him, scanning the sky for anything different or falling then, when nothing remarkable happened she shook her head, a fond smile on her lips before she went back to her book.

*^*^*^*

“I love you. I’m completely and utterly in love with you. Please don’t get married.”

She held up a finger, then, slowly as her eyes dragged over the page in front of her, looked at him. “I’m sorry, I didn’t hear what you said?”

Gold sat down next to her, smiling amiably. “I said the library’s coming along beautifully.”

She brightened up, closing her book and turning towards her friend, eager to discuss the changes she had made.

*^*^*^*^*

“I love you. I’m completely and utterly in love with you. Please don’t get married.”

There were kids screaming all over the place blatantly ignoring the cardinal rule of librarydom: quiet. Belle, happy that her Easter egg hunt had gone off with success turned to him, her felt rabbit ears quivering on top of her head.

“I can’t hear you over all this racket. What?”

He shook his head in amusement. “I said clean up is going to be a pain. Need any help?”

*^*^*^*

“I love you. I’m completely and utterly in love with you. Please don’t get married.”

Belle plucked an earbud out, craning her neck to look at him. “Wha?”

The smile looked wrong on his face as if it was made of plastic and stank of sewage. “I said your fiancé just rolled into town,” he pointed to the flashy car that violated several noise ordinances.

She looked to where he was pointing. “Oh.”

*^*^*^*^*

“I love you. I’m completely and utterly in love with you. Please don’t get married.”

Belle lifted the veil from her face despite the protests of the seamstress who was trying to get it to hang right.

“What?” she breathed, her cheeks flushing.

He bit his lip, glancing down at his cane before looking back at her, bravely. “You heard me,” he said.

She stepped off the dais, scattering pins and dressmaker’s chalk as she went, holding out her hands to him.

He took them automatically, trembling while she gave a joyful laugh, clutching him to her tightly as she whispered in his ear, “Why didn’t you say so before?”


	31. It's Always Been You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> betweenpaperpages asked: 83. “It’s always been you.”(Rumbelle) Please and thank you :)
> 
>  
> 
> (Scarlet Pimpernel AU!!)

“It’s always been you,” she said, disbelievingly, her heart dropping to her toes. She knew it to be true, had deciphered all the clues, pieced together the crazy-edged puzzle with great care, but she still demanded the truth.

Until now.

“This whole time?” she whispered. “You made me believe you were… Some sort of coward?”

Her husband bowed, wordlessly. The Dark One, scourge of the Evil Queen and defender of those whom she’d considered enemies, he had been a mere legend for months, elusive and rarely seen, his deeds had become legends within hours of their execution. Songs were sung in his honor and a bounty placed on his head.

And he was her husband the whole time!

Belle had regretted marrying her husband from the first, wondering where the sweet and brave man was that she thought he’d been. He was so changed now. After their nuptials, he sniveled and cowered and shivered at the sound of a horse’s neigh. Belle tried to be compassionate and understanding, doing her best to coax out the man she had fallen in love with out of this strange facsimile. She tried until he refused to help a traveling family, poor and in search of lodgings for the night. He turned them away in the bitter snow despite her protests and it was then that she realized that he was not who she thought he was and she cried bitterly that night, sending him from her bed.

He rarely slept inside after that night. Belle didn’t know what he did nor did she care to ask. Instead she eagerly turned her attention to The Dark One whose actions were just becoming known in their land. Every scrap of news, every deed retold made her heart swell and she felt glad that there was at least one person in the world who wanted to do some good.

And she was his wife the whole time!

His deception complete, Belle stood before him with tears in her eyes, pleading. “Why didn’t you tell me from the first?” she asked. “That family—”

“Spies, my love,” he said tenderly, cupping her cheek in the palm of his calloused hand. “Sent by The Evil Queen to flush out The Dark One.”

“But you made me think so badly of you,” she hiccuped. “All this time — months! And we could have been together if only you had trusted me.”

He pressed his lips together in a tight line. “I’m sorry. I thought it better to protect you. I can see now that I was wrong.”

Belle shook her head. “Tell me now, did you ever love me at all or was that also a ruse?”

“Oh, Belle,” he said, his eyes watering and face twisting in agony. “I have loved you the entire time.”


	32. Kiss Me!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> #71. “Kiss me, quick!”
> 
> (Inception AU! *bwaaaaaaaaaaaaammmmmmmm*)

Belle had promised to be an imaginative architect. Capable and inventive and curious, she was one of the best assets to his team, which is why Gold was so disappointed at having been discovered. Their inception had been carefully planned for months with every detail thought out from start to finish. Long days and sleepless nights going over plans and contingencies and patterns and all of that fucking training – now utterly wasted. He should never have recruited her.

Every head turned towards them, every eye watching their every move and Gold was at a loss. They had agreed no guns in this particular inception and he knew he would never be able to fight off so many. They would be “killed” and awake and caught in thirty seconds and killed for real unless he thought of something quick.

Belle seized him by the lapels of his jacket, hastily telling him under her breath, “Kiss me, quick!”, then planted her mouth on his in a searing kiss that made the dream they were in feel like… Well, it felt like a fucking dream and he dimly wondered if the target wasn’t Zoso, but him.

Her mouth was warm and soft and he grabbed at her waist as her tongue swept over his lips, the shock of it sending him gasping as he pulled back.

“What’s happening,” he muttered, shaking his head to get his brain functioning again.

“Be quiet,” she whispered, pulling him back to her for another kiss. “It’s working.”


	33. Red Cricket

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Red Cricket #52. Can I kiss you?

Hopper knew, deep down, that Ruby was a wolf. A werewolf to be exact, deadly, dangerous, sometimes irrational, and not always in charge of when or how she transformed.

He knew this. But he still followed her into the woods, trailing after her with all the hope his tiny cricket heart could muster. She was dangerous, but he trusted her.

She smiled at him, a wide, toothy grin that made him shiver in anticipation. She would eat him if he let her. She may even ask.

It was done in an instant. One moment she was a woman, vibrant and sexual and in charge and the next there was the wolf howling as she leapt away in a single bound. He tried to keep up, but he was only human and even in his cricket days he would never have been able to keep stride with her. The most he could hope for was that she would come back to him.

He stopped, bending over his knees and gasping for breath when the stitch in his side got too painful to bear. It would be a long, lonely trek back to town.

She came at him just as he turned around, lunging on silent paws, dropping him to the floor in one fell swoop. The wind knocked out of him and his glasses dangling from one ear, he gaped at her - a woman once more, grinning and panting and ready to consume him whole straddling his legs with her powerful thighs and her hands pressed against his chest.

She lowered her head, inhaling along his neck, tasting fear and arousal and want coming off his skin.

A low growl as near a pure as she would ever achieve sounded deep in the back of her throat and she whispered, hotly, into his ear, “Can I kiss you?”

* * *

_**[ashadeofpemberley](https://ashadeofpemberley.tumblr.com/)** asked:_

_CanIKissYou (Red Cricket June prompt)- We all know how Ruby asked if she could kiss Archie, but how does Archie ask Ruby if he could kiss her?_

 

It wasn’t often that he could sneak up on a wolf even in her human form. Not that he wanted to very often, but Ruby was always on alert, always ready to pounce and, as such, difficult to get one up over. But, every once in awhile he caught her daydreaming — about what, he didn’t know, probably about running naked in the moonlight or running as a wolf in the moonlight or running in general. Probably in the moonlight. Ruby liked to run. She liked to howl and scratch and do all manner of things with her tongue that had him toss out Freud and pick up the Joys of Sex instead. (Which he ordered online rather than borrow it from the library. Belle was understanding and open-minded, but he preferred to keep things, well, private.)

Ruby was sitting along the pier, her feet swinging back and forth over the water as she leaned back on her two hands. Her face was turned up toward the sun, eyes closed and a soft smile on her wide and beautiful mouth. She looked happy. Content. And Archie’s heart clenched as he watched her sun herself, wishing that he could join her. Then he realized that nothing was stopping him and she could probably smell him standing there behind her. If not him, then Pongo for sure. He carefully sat next to her, his umbrella to one side and Pongo on the other, stretching out on his side with a thump and a soft grunt that turned into a long exhale as he closed his eyes.

Their arrival startled Ruby and he might have patted himself on the back for it if he wasn’t so completely taken with the way her eyes bore through him, her smile no longer soft and secret but broad and full of teeth.

And what sharp teeth they were, too. The better to gobble him up with.

“You looked like you could use some company,” he said, adjusting his glasses, nervously. Maybe he shouldn’t have disturbed her.

“I can if it’s you,” she said, lowering her eyes to stare  She licked her lips, her pink tongue darting out provocatively and he felt himself leaning closer, irresistibly drawn in.

It wasn’t wise to touch anyone without their permission let alone someone who could, quite literally, bite your head off, but he found his lips pressed against hers without warning, her startled gasp the only clue that it was he who initiated the kissing. She snapped, nipping at his lower lip in retaliation, the sharp pain subsiding as she lapped at the teeth marks with her tongue, soothing the wound. Her hand snaked around his head, pulling him closer, deepening the kiss with a fervor that should have embarrassed him, but he was too engrossed in her to care what anyone who saw them thought. He could have howled with pleasure.

Maybe tonight he would try.


	34. Tell Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> quinninthenorth asked: Rumbelle + 59. “Tell me to go and I will, but if you ask me to stay I’ll never leave you again.”

Belle had thought long and hard during her journey back to the Dark Castle after meeting Mulan and saving Prince Philip. She came to the conclusion that love endured. To be frank, it put up with a lot of shit.

Well, she’d put up with his already, now it was his turn to put up with hers.

The castle was surprisingly dark and quiet and unlocked when she finally reached it and she was grateful for that. The weeks sleeping in the rough had taken their toll on her and she was exhausted. Even if

“Rumplestiltskin?” she called out, not liking the way her voice echoed through the grand entry. He was here, she knew that — his presences was in the very walls, but he was hiding, the coward. “Come on, I know you’re in here,” she said, stepping through to the grand hall where he kept his prized trophies.

She looked around curious to note what had changed in her absence. The curtains were still down and the silver tea set laid out for two on the table instead of the bone china. She thought he hated that set. And why two cups?

Frowning, she stepped further into the room. The spinning wheel still and had a fine layer of dust on it as did the thin rope of gold that dangled limply from it. She dragged a finger over the wheel, rubbing the dust from her finger absently as she turned toward the side door. He would be up in his tower then, if not spinning here and she stepped boldly towards it but something out of the corner caught her eye and she stumbled to a standstill.

That was different in his collection. There on the plinth where the goblet stood…

Tears sprang to her eyes as she picked up the cup, its chip plainly seen. He kept only his greatest treasures on display, everything else was relegated to the cupboard.

“I see the rumors of your death were greatly exaggerated.”

Belle whirled, nearly dropping the cup in the process. He was right behind her, snuck up so quietly that she hadn’t heard him come into the room. Or perhaps he was there the entire time, invisible to her eyes. He looked tired. Tired and older and worn and at war with himself and all she wanted to do was to hold him close and promise never to leave again. She tightened her fingers around the cup to keep herself from doing just that.

“What?”

His nostrils flared as he spoke. “Sent her to me with the news then? Preparing to surprise me with the good news? Hoping I’d be so overjoyed to see you that I’d forget your betrayal?”

She stared at him open mouthed and more than a little puzzled. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Rumple. I never betrayed you and I don’t know who she is.”

He glanced down at the cup in her hands, his mouth pressed into a thin line.

“What happened to the goblet, Rumplestiltskin?” she whispered. “There was a gold cup here, jeweled and ugly and impractical. Where did it go?”

He shrugged, a tiny lift of his shoulders. “Must have lost it.”

She eyed him skeptically. “You don’t lose things, Rumple.”

“No,” he murmured to himself. “Only people.”

She blinked, confused.. “What? I don’t—”

“Give me the cup and then you can go,” he snarled. “Report to the queen that her association with me is over—”

The protest on her lips went unheard. He tried to snatch the cup from her hands, but she pulled back at it, cradling it against her chest, hunching over it to protect it from him. “No, Rumple.”

“I don’t know who you are, but your deception will not fool me, girl!” he spat, getting in her face, his black teeth inches bared and his eyes hard as nails as he grabbed at her arm. “Give me the cup and I’ll show mercy on you.”

“There is no deception,” she cried. “It’s Belle, it’s _me_ ” she said, wrenching away from him with a jerk of her arm.

He yelled at her, the tirade spiteful and cruel and unstoppable.

She backed away from him, chest heaving and looking wildly for a way to make him believe her. There was nothing in the room to help. Nothing but the cup in her hands and he was growing a ghastly shade of blackish purple through his scales. There was no room for reason or argument in his wild accusations.

There was only one way to get through to him. She hurled the cup to the floor, smashing it into a thousand pieces.

He broke off with a cry, falling to his knees as he stared at the shards of porcelain.  

“What did you do?” he asked in a harsh whisper. “Why did you do that? It was all I had left of her.”

She fell down beside him, crawling close, holding him to her as she pet his hair away from his face. She made him look her in the eye, willing him to believe her. “I _am_ Belle, Rumplestiltskin. I just couldn’t stay away any longer.”

At last understanding dawned in his eyes. “Only one person has eyes like that,” he murmured, glancing from one to the other. “Like sea glass swept up on the shores of Neverland. She told me you were dead,” he moaned. “Dead!”

She took his hand and placed it over her chest. Her heartbeat was strong and fast. He stared in wonder at his hand touching her, even as she held it fast, not letting him go.

“Rumple, I love you. I know you love me, too. I _know_ it,” she said, her voice thick through her tears. “Tell me to go and I _will_ , but if you ask me to stay I’ll never leave you again.”

He grabbed for her hand and pulled her close to him, weeping in her hair. “I thought you were dead.”

“That is obviously not true,” she blubbered on his shoulder, sniffling.

He shook his head, mumbling something about queens and tea sets. Belle caught none of it, her own tears were drowning out any words spoken. They cried themselves out kneeling amid the broken shards of their tea cup and, at last when the last sniffle subsided and she was curled up in his lap within his strong arms, she felt happy once more as if she was finally where she belonged.

“And now you must go,” he said after a long moment, pulling away from her reluctantly.

“What?” she said. “I-I don’t understand!”

He refused to look at her. “I cannot have you with me when the curse comes. But I will find you in the next world. I will come and get you and we’ll be together when my task is complete,” he raised his eyes to look at her, hesitantly. “If you’ll still have me.”

“I really don’t understand, Rumple. What curse? What task? Please tell me what’s going on,” she pleaded.

He looked at her, his resolve wobbling. “I will tell you everything, Belle. But then you must choose…” He waved his hand, producing a small globe out of thin air where it hovered before them and another wave of the hand produced a tiny box with sigils carved on it. That one he held in his hand close to him.

“I can send you anywhere in the worlds and I will find you,” he said indicating the globe. “Or I can keep you with me… in this box and I will bring you out again when the curse breaks.“ He held them out to her. “Your choice, my darling.”

Belle’s heart stuttered to a stop then sped up again, faster than it had ever beat before. She looked at the globe and the box in turn. To travel the world was her dream, but it would be meaningless without him. After a moment’s thought, she reached for the box, cupping it in her hands. “I choose to stay with you,” she told him. “Now tell me about the curse.”


	35. Sit Stay

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> applejackcat asked: A Rumbelle prompt crossed my mind and made me think of you: Gold would do anything to make his son smile after Bae's mom leaves them, and if that means adopting the ragamuffin runt of a puppy they find behind the pawnshop one rainy evening, so be it. Flash forward five months: the mutt turns out to be part draft horse and is bigger than Gold believes a dog has a right to be. Cue trainer!Belle teaching the pup some doggy manners.

It was just a tiny thing when they found it, all scruffy and bedraggled, its tiny ears and wiry gray fur sticking matted up and looking like it had been missing more than a few meals. He had thought it was full grown and that it wouldn’t be much trouble at home.

A boy should have a dog, he thought as he picked it up out of the refuse pile, checking for the sex before he tucked it (him) into his jacket to keep him warm and safe and brought him home.

Bae loved him of course and the puppy loved Bae and Gold loved Bae and the puppy once he was bathed and figured out where to pee and they were all very happy at home together. Happy until the puppy, or Squirt as they’d taken to calling him until they could think of something better (they never did), grew.

And grew.

And grew.

And _grew u_ ntil he was taller than their kitchen table and able to look at Bae in the eye while standing on all fours. And when he stood up on his hind legs — which he did often, Squirt could rest his chin on the top of Gold’s head.

Gold men weren’t all that big, never had been. They tended towards the wee side. Thin, short, scrappy, a bit scruffy… kind of like Squirt had been when they’d adopted him. And now they were faced with a dog outweighed them, but out-talled them as well. It was disconcerting to say the least and Gold sometimes felt like he was living with Clifford the big red dog on good days and a barking horse on the bad ones.

That’s fine. They could adjust… after puppy proofing their home, packing away every tiny breakable object off of every flat surface within tail reach. Squirt was a happy dog. Happy dogs wagged their tails. Happy tails meant broken china.

The problem with puppies that grow up into big dogs is that he was way beyond Gold’s abilities to train. Squirt’s size and sheer strength made walking him an almost impossible task for they had learned that he had a prey drive that had become legendary in the town. Anything smaller than a retriever was to be chased and the dog ran fast, sometimes pulling Gold along with him, sometimes the owner-less leash trailing along after him until someone or something stopped the pooch.

Gold was afraid he would get hit by a car (would probably do more damage to the car) or get picked up by animal control or lost or, god forbid, chase the wrong animal and start a fight.

He made a desperate call to a trainer he found on Yelp with exemplary reviews. She could work miracles, her customers had said and Gold really hoped so because he refused to get rid of Squirt. The dog was part of their family now and Bae loved him dearly. He had a very tall privacy fence built in his backyard to keep Squirt mostly contained, but there was still the matter of the fact that this dog still wouldn’t mind.

He didn’t have much faith in the trainer when she showed up for their first private lesson. She was even smaller than him and he didn’t think that was even possible. Tiny, almost doll-like, she beamed up at him from below her baseball cap through which her thick chestnut hair was pulled into a ponytail in the back. She was beautiful and, if he was a younger man, the instant attraction he felt would have been welcome. As it was, it made him uncomfortable, fully aware that he was old enough to be her…. Uncle. One that wasn’t actually related to the family, but was sort of given an honorary title and fully capable of… He quietly but forcefully pressed the tip of his cane on his toe to prevent that train of thought from moving any further.

“Yes?” he said, even though he knew who she was. He had made the appointment after all.

“I’m Belle,” she told him confidently, looking him in the eye and giving him a firm handshake.

He looked down at her, from the top of her hat, down to her grubby sneakers and reluctantly let her in, leading her to the backyard where Squirt was playing with Bae. Gold didn’t think Belle could control his dog, but she came all this way… Maybe she could recommend another trainer instead.

“You didn’t tell me you have a wolfhound,” she said, her blue eyes lighting up when she saw Squirt for the first time.

Gold blinked. “A what?”

Squirt, at the sound of the screen door opening, had come bounding up toward them, nearly galloping in his haste to meet the new person. He jumped up to put his paws on her shoulders and Gold flinched, expecting Belle to be flattened by his barking fucking horse, but, to his surprise, she calmly stepped forward into the space where he expected the dog to land. Squirt, expecting more of a landing strip, cut his leap short and broke away, wagging his tail furiously.

“No,” she told him calmly, then looked at Gold. “Is he a jumper?”

Gold rubbed his own shoulders, where it felt like the bruises were a permanent feature. “Yeah. He, uh, gets excited.”

“Well, when he does that just step into it. He’ll break off and stop the jump. If you step back, that gives him more room and he’s capable of knocking someone down. You said he liked to chase things?”

Gold nodded, watching his dog sniff at her with all the doggedness of a TSA agent with a superiority complex. She just shoved Squirt’s head away when it reached areas best left alone.

“Sniffing is normal. It’s how they greet each other and get to know another dog,” she said, calmly as if his dog hadn’t just shoved his nose in her crotch two seconds before. “But we’re not dogs and he needs to learn that.”

Gold just nodded his head.

Bae had come running up then, a small scratch on his face from a collision with Squirt when they both tried to catch the same ball. Gold flinched at the sight of it, cupping his son’s chin and brushing up against it with the pad of his thumb. Bae shrugged him off and ran back to get the ball. Obviously the scratch wasn’t that bad, but Gold hated the sight of it.

“How old did you say Squirt was?” Belle asked, turning her face up to him.

He looked up at her bleak-eyed as Squirt shoved up against him. He only kept his balance through sheer will power and by planting his cane firmly at his feet. “I don’t know. I found him in a ditch. We’ve had him for about ten months.”

“Y-you found him?” she sputtered, looking back at the dog in disbelief.

“Yes?”

“And how big was he when you found him?”

Gold held out his hands, indicating the size.

“So… about ten weeks…” She bit her lip, her face turning red with anger. “Some people are disgusting excuses for human beings, Mr. Gold. You’re a wonderful man to have taken him in like that, especially not knowing how big he’d get.”

“You said he was a…”

“Irish wolfhound,” she told him curtly, staggering a little from Squirt nudging at her, but she just ignored him. “It’s a rare breed over here. You have to either ship them in from overseas or go through one of a few breeders. The closest breeder I know of is in New York state. They’re very prized, very expensive and I think I know who had this puppy before tossing them out like garbage. I’m going to ask around a bit. You just don’t lose dogs, especially not ones worth more than what I paid for my car. They’re practically a controlled substance in this country.” She looked up at him, her expression softening. “Don’t worry. You’re Squirt’s owner. You won’t have to give him up.”

“I don’t want to give him up,” Gold said. “I just want him to sit.”

Belle’s face broke out into the most charming smile, her blue eyes shining up at him. “Then let’s get started,” she said.

Belle’s gentle but firm nature soon had Squirt eating out of her hand. Literally. She had a pouch of soft treats clipped to her belt that she dipped into whenever Squirt performed to her satisfaction and a clicker that she used for training. She went over sit, come, stay, and down in rapid succession much to the amazement of Gold and Bae who looked at her as if she was performing magic tricks. She had each of them practice with the dog in turn until they figured out the right tone to use and not to reward him before he had done his task.

Squirt, she was happy to inform them, wasn’t stupid, he was just untrained, a bit rambunctious, and still a puppy. He would still be a puppy for at least another year and then, to Gold’s dismay, they would get at best another eight years with him, four if they were unlucky.

“Large breeds don’t live very long,” she told him, gently. “It’s the price they have to pay for having such big, loving hearts.”

Gold wrapped an arm around his son’s shoulders, looking over at Squirt who had finally been worn out and was lying on his side underneath the shade of an oak. He was panting, his large pink tongue lolling out of his mouth onto the grass.

He didn’t even want to think of life without Squirt.

The lesson over, Gold walked her back to the front porch where they lingered for a moment. He looked at her car, a bit battered and very old, and wondered how his dog could cost more than what she paid for it. How did dogs get to be so expensive? What ever happened to just going to the pound to pick one up?

Belle laid a hand on his arm, bringing his attention back to her and Gold half expected her to reach into her pouch and feed him a treat. “Keep practising with him every day, even if it’s for a few minutes. He’ll improve until you won’t have to reward him after every time he does something.” She glanced up at him quickly. “If you want I’ll come back next week and we can work on his commands some more and add a few. What we usually do is build up on their command list gradually, depending my clients’ needs. I would recommend never letting him out of the yard off leash since he’ll chase anything that moves, but we can work on his leash walking skills and his sit stays.”

“Yes, I’d like that,” he said eagerly then stammered out, “It-it’s difficult walking him with a cane,” he explained, holding it up.

She looked at it then up at him, her pink lips parted as she quickly licked at them. “The cane won’t be a problem, I promise you,” she told him. “In the meantime, you have my number. Call me if you have any problems with Squirt or if you have any questions.”

He nodded his head, wondering if the invitation to call her included such important questions such as “Will you go out to dinner with me?” or “Can you come back and maybe stay forever?”

“I’d like that. Thank you, Belle,” he said instead, a bit too warmly for his own peace of mind.

Another smile, another glance at his cane and his face, then she was off with the flip of her ponytail.

  
He watched her leave, leaning against the doorway as he waved her off, smiling to himself aware of only one thing: she would be back.

* * *

_**Anonymous** asked:_

_Prompt: Squirt has lesson number 2._

 

“Today we can start with teaching Squirt ‘place’,” Belle said, looking around the living room. “Do you, uh, have a dog bed for him?”

“Mostly he sits on the couch,” Gold told her sheepishly.

“If that works for you,” she said. “But he needs a place a spot for him to go when you’re busy. Like when you’re making dinner. You can’t really take the couch with you places you know?”

Gold nodded, understanding what she meant and sent Bae upstairs to fetch something Squirt could use in the meantime. His son went thundering up the stairs and back down, dragging the comforter from Gold’s bed behind him proudly.

“It smells like you, Papa, so he’ll like it more!”

He stared at the blanket then at Belle, who was biting her lip trying to keep from laughing and then at Squirt who was sniffling the blanket with more enthusiasm than he thought it warranted. 

“Thanks, Bae. We’ll go out and pick out a bed for him later. And a new blanket for me,” he added with a smirk.

* * *

  _anneelliotscat; Puppy magic! And there’s that cat in the tree who seems to have adopted them, right? That grey tabby up there. He just yawned at you._

 Puff was just about the only thing that Squirt didn’t chase. The cat had showed up out of nowhere, jumping down from the tree onto the ground in front of them, startling Gold, who had reached for Squirt’s leash on instinct. 

The cat, a gray tabby that nearly blended in with Squirt’s wiry fur, just padded up to the dog, either unaware of its impending death or, perhaps, it was some sort of kitty dare. Maybe there was a whole colony of cats in the tree watching and trading mice as they bet on their friend’s lifespan. 

It was a Belle day. She had been coming every Saturday for three months to help the Gold’s train Squirt — a lot longer than typical, but they had enjoyed her visits and had just kept asking her to come back month after month to continue Squirt’s lessons. Maybe it was because she was there that day, or maybe Squirt’s prey drive had been worked out of him by then, but the fact of the matter was the giant dog merely rolled onto his back when the cat walked up to his face and ran its tail under his nose. 

The humans sat there, stunned at this new development, Gold and Belle staring at each other and the animals in turn, but Bae, that eager little boy, had run over to the cat to scoop him up into his spindly arms and looked at his father with those large, brown eyes just brimming with hope.


	36. Swimming AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> thestraggletag asked: Prompt: Gold doesn't know how to swim and Bae wants to learn, so he decides he needs to learn before his son. Belle, who volunteers as a lifeguard at the local pool, offers to help.

Belle sat at the edge of the pool, her eyes wide as she watched Mr. Gold struggle towards the other side and grabbed onto the side of the pool, gasping for air as he held on for dear life.

It was too bad, she thought as she slipped into the warm water, swimming towards him like a torpedo, that such a wonderful father was nearly hopeless in the water. The man kicked like one would ride a bicycle, barely keeping his head above water and wasting energy instead of knifing through the water naturally.

Looks like there was a need for a more hands on approach.


	37. Medium

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> thestraggletag asked: Prompt: Medium!Gold is sent to cleanse a home. Instead he falls in love with spirit!Belle.

He took a deep breath and let it out, releasing all the negativity inside of him. He needed a clear head for the task in front of him, one of ridding the manor of its ghostly haunt, the spirit residing in it unwelcome to its new owners. At least, that was what he had been hired to do originally. He had long since abandoned it for other, more important pursuits.

It was the fourth week of his job, the stubborn willfulness of the spirit demanding that he spend every night in the large bedroom on the second floor until the house was cleansed. The wallpaper of the room was yellowed and peeling and spotted in place, but Gold could tell that it had once been bright and cheerful, back when the spirit had inhabited it in the flesh. It had remained unchanged ever since the passing of the last French, no one dared touch her room for she had been so beloved that to change anything was to deny her very existence. Now, with the new owners, she was to leave the premises, expected to move on to a better place, but she was waiting for someone.

Gold didn’t know who that person might be and neither did she, but she felt, deeply, that there was one who would love her enough to set her free from her earthly prison.

He found a photograph of her in the library archives. A black and white tintype that showed a small heart-shaped face, beautiful and mysterious, and a mass of curls piled up on her head and a smile such as was unusual in an old picture. She wore a white muslin dress and in her small hand held a single rose that touched her shoulder, a gift from her father who was well known for his prize roses. Belle, the spirit claimed as her human name and Gold believed her because no other word could ever describe such ethereal beauty as he saw in that spotted sepia picture. She told him that her eyes were blue and that her hair was the color of chestnuts. He spent his days thinking of her, imagining her nearby as he went about his normal life until he swore that he was hallucinating her by his side.

She was beautiful and full of laughter and life. It was too bad for him that she was dead.


	38. Can I Touch Your...?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous asked: Rumbelle, “Can I touch your boob?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote two ficlets for this prompt.

“Can I touch your boob?”

Belle stiffened and whipped around, eyes blazing and ready to call out the imbecile that thought that was an okay thing to say to someone. She was met, unsurprisingly, by a man looming over her and smelling like he’d just crawled out of the cheapest bottle of whisky imaginable. He was greasy with stale sweat and unkempt and leering at her with a half-drunken smirk that made her skin crawl.

“Excuse me?” she said as menacingly as she could with all over her five foot two frame. She was small, but she knew how to fight someone off if she had to. She hoped it wouldn’t come to that. She reached into her pocket for her phone just in case. A quick glance around showed her that the dark hallway they were in, the one leading to the toilets at the Rabbit Hole, was as empty as the man’s head. She could call for help, but it was karaoke night and no one would hear her over the din of the off-key singers or the off-key hecklers.

He smiled wider and licked his lips. “Your boob. ‘S gorgeous. Wanna touch it.”

Belle stepped away from him, trying to maneuver so that she had a clear exit to the bar, but she realized that, though the man was clearly intoxicated, he was sober enough to herd her in the opposite direction towards the back where the lights were out.

“No. I want you to go away.”

“And I wanna touch your boobs,” he slurred, stumbling closer. “Don’t always get wha- we want do we?”

She stared down at him, realizing that this was about to get physical real fast and she needed to be the first to act, take him by surprise before he grabbed her.

“Look at you,” he hic, doing just that, dragging his bloodshot eyes up from her toes all the way to the top of her head. “Coming in here all high and mighty with your fake as fuck accent and your manners and too good for the rest of us. Gonna touch your boobs. Do more than that an’ you’ll thank me.”

He was swaying over now, his rancid breath washing over her. Invading her nostrils until she wanted to puke.

“Leave the lady alone, Keith.”

That voice. It came from behind the man — Keith — just loud enough to be heard in a low growl that spoke of power and the unwillingness to listen to any opposition. Belle sighed with relief as this Keith turned around, slowly and off balance, to come face to face with Mr. Gold.

No wonder she hadn’t seen him walk up. First she didn’t want to take her eyes off the man who tried to assault her, but second, Mr. Gold was barely bigger than she was and her attacker was enormous. Little he may be, she also knew his reputation very well, as did, it appeared, Keith did too because he immediately paled and backed away, holding his hands up as if to show that he was unarmed.

Free now, Belle unclenched her fists that she didn’t even realize she’d balled up, her nailed embedded into the palms of her hands in painful red half-moons that looked like they might scab over. She should be relieved. And grateful. But all she could feel was horror that this had happened in the first place, that she couldn’t even go to the bathroom without bringing someone along with her for safety. Storybrooke was supposed to be a nice town, a family place, but it hid its monsters just like every other town in the world it seemed.

“M-Mr. Gold,” Keith said, his voice now a disgusting whine. “Don’t do anything rash now. I didn’t touch her. I didn’t know she was yours.”

Mr. Gold’s head jerked back, scowling. “Miss French doesn’t belong to anyone, dearie. Least of all someone like me.”

Keith’s eyes dared to look at her hopefully, either in a false sense of hope that he might still have a chance to molest her or a completely misguided plea that she might beg for his life. He was wrong on both counts, but Belle was more interested in knowing why or how Mr. Gold knew her name when she’d never spoken to the man in her life.

Gold looked at her, as if Keith wasn’t worth his time, his long hair hiding his eyes from her in the gloom of the hallway. “Did he hurt you, Miss French?”

She shook her head. “Not physically, no. Not yet,” she added with a sick feeling in her stomach. Not yet. But he was going to.

Gold’s head whipped back to Keith whose legs were visibly wobbly now. “You’ve taken away her sense of security. It will be a long time before she feels safe. I wonder if you know what that feels like,” he murmured almost to himself.

Keith blinked slowly, shaking his head. “What?” he asked, then turned his attention back to Belle, angry now. “Look at her, man! She’s askin’ for it! She wants the attention, I was just givin’ it to her.”

Her fists were back and she leaned toward him, ready to pummel him into oblivion. “I had to pee, you moron! Nothing about that screams rape me!”

Gold held up a hand, but didn’t touch her as if he knew she wouldn’t like that after what had just happened. “Miss French,” he said, turning towards her again in a casual motion. “What do you suggest?”

The first thing that popped into her mind was so violent that she was afraid of herself, frightened that she’d become just as bad as him.

She opened her mouth and “I’d like to make a police report,” she said, slowly looking at Gold in the eyes. She could see them now a bit, glittering faintly in the low light. She should have felt terrified at the sight of them. Like she’d traded one monster for another, but all she could feel was an overwhelming sense of relief.

He nodded at her, just a bare twitch of his head and had his phone pulled out of his pocket before she could react. He bared his teeth in a grim smile at the now quivering man before them. “If that’s your wish, Miss French,” he growled. “Let’s let Sheriff Swan handle our friend here.” He paused just before hitting the send button. “Just one thing,” he mused, picking up his cane and hefting it before whipping it out like a scorpion’s tail, smacking Keith in the face with a sickening sound like a melong being dropped from a window.

Keith fell to the floor in a heap while Belle held in a scream, her hands over her mouth in shock. Gold just examined the handle carefully, inspecting it for damage or blood, then carried on as if nothing was out of the ordinary, speaking on the phone in a voice that Belle couldn’t hear over the rushing blood in her ears.

Gold flipped the phone closed and pocketed it, then looked at her. “You’ll be safe with Sheriff Swan, Miss French,” giving every implication that the sheriff was the only person she didn’t have to be afraid of in this scenario.

Belle’s hands dropped down at her sides, limp and heavy. “I— Thank you,” she said, sincerely, breathing heavily on the verge of hysterics.

He eyed her, carefully, surprise and shock warring with the concern clearly written on his face. “No need to thank me. I was just passing by,” he muttered, looking away from her towards the bar where people were drinking, oblivious to the violence that had just taken place in the hallway.

She came closer, stepping over Keith’s large feet, and took his hand and pressed it warmly. “Thank you just the same,” she said, feeling the tears well up at last. She’d wondered when they would appear.

He watched her for a moment before he gave her a shy, boyish smile. Just a curve at the edges of his lips. “‘S’no matter.” 

* * *

“May I touch your… Uh…”

Gold’s face flushed as he fumbled for the right word, knowing there was no way to properly ask this without giving offense of some kind.

Belle just gave a small huff of a laugh and shook her head fondly. “My breasts?,” she asked under her breath so the students didn’t hear. “That’s fine. I don’t think we can do this without some sort of inappropriate physical contact of some sort.”

Relieved, Gold just gave her a smile and stepped behind her, slowly wrapping his hands around her ribs until his fingers came to rest just at undersides of her breasts. She was soft even through the leotard she wore and he could feel the steady thrumming of her heartbeat, picking up slightly at his touch until it settled back down once more when she was accustomed to the feel of him in such an intimate manner.

He turned his attention to the people watching, as their lesson in proper technique.

“Now, the turn. You don’t want to just shove the ladies up by their armpits and you don’t want to squeeze them until they bruise either. Just guide her — gently,” he admonished as he walked her around in a slow circle as the music began, his fingers pressing when he wanted her to go left or right and then the dip of his knees just before he brought her up in a swirl of chiffon skirts. She anticipated his movements, jumping effortlessly as he began a lift, the whole of the movement seemingly flowing from one step into the next as if they had always danced together instead of having just met for the first time a half hour before.

He held her as if she was precious and never let his eyes leave hers until he led her into a spin or another jump. She smiled at him mysteriously, her body flowing along with his, melding to him until they were dancing as one. Instinct taking over until the music stopped and they were left staring at each other, panting from exertion and covered with a fine sheen of perspiration. He watched as a bead of sweat traveled from her temple down her soft and round cheeks. It followed the long line of her neck until it pooled into the shallow dip of her collarbone. He’d never felt as strong an urge to lick something until now and he stepped back abruptly, holding her steady until she’d regained her footing, then took his hands away, his thumb and forefinger rubbing at each other in a compulsive motion he had never been able to overcome.

“That’s, uh… That’s all for now,” he said, turning around in a swift and graceful movement. “Go see Madam Regina for your next lesson.”

He stood next to the stereo while his pupils gathered their things and waited for the chattering to die down before he turned to Miss French, the newest teacher in his school of dance. She watched him carefully, one hand cupped inside another and placed in front of her, looking every inch a beautiful nightmare.

He nodded to her, a silent acknowledgement of her performance that morning. “Thank you, Miss French. That’ll be all.”


	39. Not Crying

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> we-aim-to-misbehave asked: Sentence Starters: Rumbelle (duh) “I am NOT crying, okay?! I’m allergic to jerks!”

“I am not crying, okay?” the distressed woman wearing the designer clothes wailed, lifting her head up from her desk before letting it fall back with a thunk. “I’m… allergic to jerks!”

Belle stood in front of the woman, the extra large balloon bouquet held in one hand threatening to send her airborne and the address card in the other. “Uh… Ma’am?” she asked, acutely aware of how out of place she looked in the austere office, wearing her short and flippy delivery outfit plus the balloons and, she was horrified to realised, she had been paid for the deluxe package. Meaning: she had to sing. “Ms Mills? Are you—”

A man came up next to her, looking both amused and disgusted at the same time. He was wearing an impeccable suit and with hair longer than was typical inside a corporate building. “Regina,” he said in a surprisingly melodic Scottish accent. “It’s your birthday, not the end of the world.”

Regina Mills lifted her head up and glared at him with more malice than Belle though existed. “You did this,” she accused.

The mad glanced at Belle, his eyes flicking down to her short, petticoated skirt which barely covered her derriere before quickly moving back to her face with an apologetic curve to his lips. “I assure you, Regina, I would never send you a balloon-a-gram…” his smile widened a bit at the look Belle gave him. “Not that there’s anything wrong with it,” he added. “I just wouldn’t bother. You know that.”

Regina sniffled, wiping her nose on the sleeve of her jacket.  “Yeah. You wouldn’t care that much.”

“Um…” Belle interrupted, motioning with the balloons. “These are yours.”

The other woman scooted her chair back, giving the people surrounding her desk a baleful look before she grabbed the balloons, clutching them with her manicured fingers. “Thank you,” she said, sullenly.

“I, ah.. There’s more,” she whispered awkwardly, fidgeting with her skirt.

Regina looked at her horrified. “You’re not gonna strip are you?”

Belle gasped, insulted.

The man next to her rolled his eyes and crossed his arms over his chest. Belle noticed that he had a cane in his hand. “Such nonsense. Let her do her job so she can leave and move on to the next victim.”

“Hey!” Belle grumbled. She was ready to walk out. No tip was worth the constant insults.

He only nodded his head at her, waiting for her to begin.

Oh god. She turned away from him and plastered on a big, showman’s smile, feeling like an idiot while the entire office stood by, watching her. She cleared her throat as quietly as possible then, telling herself that she was a professional and she had nothing to be ashamed of, belted with gusto:

“Have a happy, happy birthday!

From your Robin to his boo!

A happy, happy birthday!

You know that I love you.

Reginnnaaaaaaaa!”

Everyone was quiet for a moment before they burst out into laughter. Belle covered her face in her hands and shook her head wondering how she allowed her father to talk her into adding this service to their flower delivery business then looked up, hoping she had magically transported back to the shop. No such luck. Nor was there any sign of Regina Mills, though her balloons were still hovering over her desk like a red, yellow, and blue cloud of despair.

The man next to her, nudged her, motioning with his head to follow him to the door. His smile practically transformed his face from a terrifying CEO to a boyish lad who had just heard a good joke. A joke that was her voice.

“That was brilliant, Miss…”

“French. Uh, Belle, actually.”

He opened the door and waited for her to walk out ahead of him. “From a Game of Thorns?” he asked, surprised. “You’re related to Moe?”

She looked at him oddly. “Yeah, he’s my dad.”

He said nothing, just shoved his hands into his pockets, the head of his cane fitting nicely between his arm and his side.

“Uh, is she going to be okay?” Belle asked, nodding her head towards Regina’s empty desk.

He turned to look in that direction then put all his attention back on her. “Yeah, she’ll crawl out from under her desk in a minute then pretend nothing happened.” He glanced at her shoes and the tassels that decorated the tops of her knee socks. “It was a pleasure hearing you, Miss French,” he told her in a low voice.

“If you’re lucky, you’ll never have to hear me again,” she said, leaning in conspiratorially.

He smirked, just a small twist of his lips. “Oh, I dunno about that. There are four birthdays at the office next month alone.” He gave her a jaunty salute then turned away and walked into the building.


	40. Caught in the Duvet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> evilsnowswan asked:  
> Ok, ready... set ... “I tried to change the duvet and I got stuck inside.” (because I couldn't stop laughing about that one)

Gold stared at the bed in front of him, the duvet moving as if it had been impregnated by a thousand snakes and they all hatched at once. “What? Happened?” he asked, dropping his briefcase on the floor with a loud thump.

Belle’s muffled voice sounded humiliated if such a thing was possible. “I tried to change the duvet… and I gotcaughtinside,” she said, hurrying her confession until it blurred into one incomprehensible word.

“What?”

He heard her take a deep breath, then, “I got caught in the duvet cover!”

He lifted the edge and peered in to see Belle’s red face staring back at him.

“ _How_?”

“I don’t know!” she said, flopping her head back down again in defeat.

He snickered and loosened his tie.  “Move over,” he said, lifting up the opening again to crawl in after her.

She held the cover up over her head with stiff arms, looking at him in confusion. “What are you doing?”

He smirked at her, then kicked off his shoes. “Launching a rescue mission.”


	41. Afraid

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous asked:  
> “I think I’ve been holding myself back from falling in love with you all over again.” RumBelle

****“I think I’ve been holding myself back from falling in love with you all over again.”

Rumple looked up at her, eyes wide and mouth parted. Belle was staring at her plate of pancakes, Granny having conceded to the heavily-pregnant woman’s cravings even during the dinner rush. She gave him a nervous glance and a half-hearted smile by way of apology. 

At last he found his voice, blinking back tears that he refused to let fall. “Wh-When did you fall out of love with me? he asked, his voice breaking.

She looked at him fully, then. “That’s just it. I haven’t. And I’m so scared.”


	42. Cat Burglar

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous asked:  
> You know, when this is over, we should really have angry sex.” Rumbelle

“You know,” she said, crossing one scantily clad leg over the other. “When this is over, we should really have angry sex.”

It had exactly the effect she wanted and Gold, the suave secret agent who had been dogging her footsteps for months — his every move mirroring her own until he trapped her in the hotel room under the guise of soliciting something a bit less illegal than the stolen jewels in her possession but slightly more compromising if word got out of his transgressions — paused just long enough as he was handcuffing her to the chair. Long enough for her to kick the legs out of him and send him sprawling on his back.

It was a nice night all things said. It was too bad it had to end in cracked foreheads and hasty exits.

She snatched the vase next to her arm and smashed it over his head, stunning him and she had one leg out the window before he was even aware of it. 

“Of course, that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t sometime, my dear Mr. Gold,” she said as she swung her legs out of the window, glancing down at the the ground below before she winked at him. “Just not tonight.“ 

She blew him a kiss then jumped, certain that she would see him again.


	43. Shortie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous asked:  
> "You're like, five feet tall. How you gonna reach me, shortie?"

“You’re like, five feet tall. How you gonna reach me, shortie?” he smirked, positive that he’d gotten his way finally.

Belle merely smirked back as she sidled up to him, grabbed his tie and yanked him down to her eye level. His eyes widened in shock just before they closed when her lips pressed against his, holding him in place while she slipped the contract from his now limp fingers. 

“Now you have to get it back,” she told him, running the corner of the folder against her lips.


	44. Love at First Sight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> applejackcat asked:  
> “Obviously you can’t tell a woman you just met that you love her, but it sucks that you can’t.”

“Obviously you can’t tell a woman you just met that you love her, but it sucks that you can’t.”

He wasn’t talking to anyone but himself, but the fact remained. He was in love.

Gold sat slumped in the back booth at Granny’s Diner, nursing his bitter coffee in between surreptitious glances at the counter and… her. She was beautiful. More beautiful than he had expected with thick, rich hair that tumbled down her back in cascading curls and blue eyes that pierced right through him. Her lips, even in that instance he’d seen her face, were the perfect shade of kissable pink — a thing he’d never thought of before this very second — and smiling just a little as she walked in from the blustery March day outside.

He didn’t who she was, but he just knew without a shred of doubt that she was the one. _The_ One. She was his and he was hers, which was something he didn’t think was ever possible. His heart tugged, as if being yanked on by a string that led directly towards the mysterious woman who had walked into the diner and stolen his life away.

He watched her, this… person and wondered about her. What was she like? What did she like to do? What did her voice sound like? Where did she live? What was her name?

He thought that she was supposed to feel the same for him. He was _told_ that when you met your match, it was an instantaneous revelation for both parties concerned, but when she walked in, her brilliant blue eyes scanning the diner briefly before settling on the empty stool at the counter, there was nothing. Not one bit of recognition when her eyes grazed his for that split second — even though _he_ knew. He knew immediately. He had felt her coming from up the street and it wasn’t until she walked in that he realized what that feeling even _was_.

He’d never heard of a match not being a match before. One-sided matches didn’t exist to his knowledge, but if they did, then it wasn’t surprising that he was one.

His coffee was cold and bitter and full of grounds and the side of his thumb bitten down until it bled by the time she slid off the stool (and how wonderful that she was just a tiny, wee thing. The perfect height, really). She said something to the waitress, too low for him to hear, but he was able to ascertain that her voice was lower than he expected it to be. Low and beautiful and calling to him. Right there, to his heart and he placed a hand on his chest as if to keep the thing inside his body lest it decide to burst out and follow her.

She pulled the strap of her purse over her shoulder and Gold watched as she walked away from him, the feeling that he would never see him again digging a black pit deep in his gut, but she didn’t feel the same thing. She couldn’t possibly feel the same thing so how could he go after her when he was the only one affected. Wasn’t it enough for him to know that she was out there? That she existed and was in the world and he could know that, at least for this last half hour, there was someone he loved.

She tripped just as she reached the door, holding her hand out on the push bar to keep herself from falling and just as she looked up from her stumble, she glanced back at him, directly at him. Her blue eyes were wide with shock as they met his and a tremulous smile played on her sweet, red lips when she was he had been watching. A blink, then two and she diverted course and headed straight for him, nearly knocking over a chair in her haste to get to him.

She stood before him triumphantly, breathing just as heavily as he was and her lips parted as she panted.

Gold sat up, swallowing loudly and pushed the cup of coffee to the side, away from his hands that itched to touch her. He could only think of one thing to say and that was, “Please?”

She nodded quickly and slid onto the bench opposite him, grabbing at his hands and holding them tight. They trembled, or maybe the trembling was all him.

“I’m Belle.”

* * *

 

_The Straggletag: I DEMAND A SEQUEL THEN. YOU’VE DONE ME EMOTIONAL DAMAGE WITH THIS FIC AND I NEED CLOSURE._

Belle. The name alone was so perfect that he should have just known it the second she walked in. Of course. Beautiful.

“My name’s Gold,” he told her, not even recognizing his own voice anymore. Was it always this gravely? Did it always feel as if it was a struggle just to breathe? Or was it Belle? It had to be. Her presence was the only thing different now.

Gold adored her already.

She smiled at him and gave a small, breathy laugh. “Just Gold? Is that your first name or your last?” she teased.

Gold never liked his first name, but maybe if Belle said it, he would learn to love it as much as he loved hers.

“Prescott, ah, Gold. Prescott Gold, but most people just call me… Gold,” he babbled, each word spilling out one on top of the other. It wasn’t until he looked into her eyes that he relaxed. Safe. His name was safe with her. With Belle.

“It’s a good name. I like it, Prescott,” she said, reaching out to take his hand. “I’ve been waiting to meet you for so long.”


	45. Floof

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> handwithquill asked:  
> Ok, this is on the list and was made for Rumbelle “Your hair is so soft…”

“Your hair is so soft…” Belle murmured as she kissed the top of her son’s downy head.

Rumple leaned over to stroke a finger just above the baby’s tiny ear. “It is,” he agreed with a wondrous smile. “He must get that from you.”

She snorted at him. “Nope. Pretty sure he inherited your floof,” she said with a teasing smile back at him. She was so tired, but she didn’t want to sleep and miss the overwhelming sense of family. It had been so long since she’d felt it that she couldn’t bring herself to rest even though she’d just been through childbirth only hours before.

Rumple looked up from their son in confusion. “Floof?”


	46. Shower Sex

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous asked:  
> “They always make shower sex sound so appealing, but honestly, this is getting dangerous.”

“They always make shower sex sound so appealing, but honestly, this is getting dangerous.”

“Ow. Ow. Ow.”

“Wait, just… lift your leg and…?”

“God that is cold! Maybe move back a bit?”

“Yes! Fu— Shit.”

“Um…

“Yeah, let’s move this to the bed.”


	47. Betting Pool

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> rosefairy15 asked:  
> "$50 bucks says it's a boy/girl" Town vs. Rumbelle, pretty please!

“Fifty bucks says it’s a boy,” Grumpy said, his shoulders hunched over the pint of ale that was set on the sticky table.

Granny, eyed him over her glasses then sighed. “You’re on.”

“And what if it’s twins?” Marco whispered, glancing over his shoulder to make sure none of the party they were referring to was there. So far the place was Rumple and Belle free.

Grumpy looked at them all balefully. “Then we all move back to the Enchanted Forest. Deal?”

Granny and Marco looked at each other then back at Grumpy. “Deal,” they said in unison.


	48. Clover

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> mrgoldsdearie asked:  
> Prompt: They find a four leaf clover.

Belle stopped abruptly, her hand a vice on his arm, her nails digging into his suit.  

“Oh my gosh!” she gasped, pointing with her other hand towards a swath of grass at their feet. “Look!”

Obliging as always, he followed her finger and stared at the tiny gray head that poked out of the clump of clover. “I-Is that a kitten?”

A tea kettle squeal was his only answer as Belle dropped her hand from his arm and fell to her knees.

“Kitty, kitty, kitty…. Kitty?” she coaxed, reaching out to the forlorn cat staring at them with wide green eyes.

“Where do you think it came from?” he asked, lowering himself carefully next to her so as not to scare the kitty off.

“I don’t know. It’s all alone.” She looked up at him, her blue eyes wide with worry and beginning to water.

He tucked a strand of her hair back tucking it behind the shell of her ear. “Shhhhh… It’s okay, we’ll find a home for it.”

“But—” she began but she was interrupted by a silky soft paw on her knee, the kitten looking up at her with a shrill mew. “Oh!” She scooped it up and cuddled it close to her chest, nuzzling its matted fur with her nose.

Gold sighed and shook his head with a smile, knowing exactly what was going to happen next. “Come on, Belle,” he said in a low voice, lifting her chin up with a finger until he saw her bright smile. “Let’s take Clover home and get him cleaned up.”


	49. The Field Trip

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rumbelle: "What have we done_______"

The pounding headache was his first clue that something was not quite right. The second clue was that his eyes felt glued shut and when he finally pried them open, the sunlight streaming through felt like a cheese grater against his corneas. He squeezed them shut again, the assault too much to take, but that muffled groaning next to him had his eyes widening despite the dust motes strafing his eyeballs.

He looked to his left and saw nothing but a mass of curls and a soft, naked shoulder sprinkled with a constellation of cinnamon colored freckles.

He made a squeaking sound from the back of his throat at the sight of his son’s fifth grade teacher in bed with him. Miss French. Beautiful, wonderful Belle French. Naked. Mostly. Her shoulder was bare, he could only assume the rest of her was, too.

That brought him up short because if she was naked then… the brush of her rear against a very sensitive part of his anatomy told him that he was also stark naked. He twitched — totally one hundred percent involuntary — and her shoulder stiffened.

She peered over her shoulder — that creamy, round shoulder that he distinctly remembered tasting now that bits of his memory were coming back to him in a disjointed rush — her blue eyes red-rimmed and wide as she stared at him.

“Oh god,” she croaked. “What have we done?”

* * *

_Rumbelle: What did I drink last night?_

He lifted a shaking hand to his head, willing himself to wake up from this beautiful nightmare. “Wha’d I drink last night?” he asked, bracing himself against the bed as he swung his legs over the edge.

An indistinct groan was his only answer, but he didn’t pay much attention to it as he tried to make sense of things. Did the bed squeak that much last night or was it just his raging hangover exaggerating it? There were shamefully few bottles of overpriced, but shitty hotel liquor scattered on the side table next to the bolted down TV remote. Not nearly enough liquor to get him actually drunk, but bad enough to account for the feeling of fire goats trying to suck his brains through his eyeballs. His clothes were piled in a heap on the floor as were Miss French’s and it was then that he realized that the pounding he heard wasn’t, in fact, a result of cheap booze, but because someone was knocking at the door. The hotel door. Of their hotel room. That they were currently fumbling around in like babies on a tilt-o-whirl.

Gold squeezed his eyes shut as reality came barreling down on him like a freight train. Oh shit.

“Miss French?” a worried voice called from the other side of the door after another round of knocking. “The itinerary said we were supposed to have breakfast before we went on our tour of the Capitol building? It’s already eight-thirty and we’re gonna miss our bus and we can’t find Neal’s dad anywhere.”

Shit! He was chaperoning the annual fifth grade field trip to Washington D.C. and doing the world’s worst job of it.

Neal was going to kill him.

* * *

_Rumbelle: "I wish you were here"_

Belle stared at the postcard on the rickety table in front of her willing the words to come, but her mind was drawing a big blank. She was humiliated and hurt and angry at Mr. Gold and angry at the hotel for stocking terrible liquor. But mostly she was angry at herself for not being better able to control herself two nights before.

Jumping Neal’s father had been a fantasy ever since she saw him three years ago when she first came to work at Storybrooke. She enjoyed being around him and liked flirting with him as much as was possible in the brief exchanges they had during school functions and she hoped like anything that she wouldn’t have Neal as a student no matter how sweet or intelligent the child was just so she could keep on flirting with his father without feeling guilty. But, that was not to be. Neal Gold’s name jumped out at her when she first got her roster and she resigned herself to a year of purely professional dealings with the boy’s father, determined to take it up a notch or two once summer break came.

Summer, it appears, had come two months early. Worse than that, the kids knew about it. They had to have figured it out. Fifth graders were short, but they weren’t stupid and even the most oblivious of them would know something had happened between Mr. Gold and herself. They were all surprisingly quiet about it, but she knew they knew. She was going to get fired. If she was lucky, she would be allowed to resign. And she was an idiot and Mr. Gold was… Her mind drifted back to the way his tongue felt like magic against her skin. She sighed heavily putting her head in her hands. Mr. Gold was worth it.

Now, while her group was ensconced within a classroom at the Smithsonian learning all about… something historical and probably boring, she decided to try and regain her footing. She promised her father a postcard before she left on the field trip and so she dutifully bought one in the large and crowded museum shop and then sat herself down in the large and crowded museum cafe, picked up her pen and told the biggest lie of her life.

“Wish you were here.”

* * *

 

Teacher Belle prompt: "Who do these belong to?"

“Hey dad, whose do these belong to?

Gold looked up from his book, a smile on his face as he gazed fondly at his son, so big now and absolutely brilliant.  His smile faded into a look of absolute horror when he saw the package of half-used birth control pills in his boy’s hands. He turned red and blustered, snatching them from Neal’s loose grip and examined them closely.

“Er… I think those belong to Miss French,” he said, weakly. “I’ll just, uh… return them to her in the morning.”

“But what are they?” Neal asked, craning his neck to get another look at them. “It’s not candy—”

“You didn’t try to eat one did you?” Gold asked, sharply. The odds of one tiny hormone pill affecting his son were nonexistent, but he still didn’t want his boy to take medication that wasn’t his. And how would he explain that to Miss French? “Sorry, my kid found your birth control and decided now was a good time to start popping pills?” Not gonna happen.

“No, Papa,” Neal told him, earnestly. “I just found them in our things and wondered is all.”

Gold relaxed until he realized Neal was still waiting for him to answer his question: What were they? And then his heart stopped. It wasn’t that he was against his son knowing about birth control and the reasons for it and he was pretty sure he could answer a generic question in a reasonably age appropriate way, but he did have strong objections about discussing the matter of his teacher’s birth control, which was entirely none of his business as was the reason why it was found among their luggage.

“It’s, uh, medicine,” he hedged with a half truth.

Neal’s eyes widened. “Is Miss French sick?” he wobbled. “Is she dying?”

Gold’s heart broke as he held out his arms to his son who allowed his father to envelop him in a bear hug. These hugs were becoming fewer and farther between now that his boy was eleven, but Neal seemed shaken at the idea of his beloved teacher possibly being sick and the contact was a welcome reassurance.

“Shhhh,” he murmured in his son’s mop of curls. “She’s not sick at all, Neal. You know the blood pressure pills I take in the morning?” he asked, waiting for his son to nod. “This is like that. It’s a type of medicine you take every day to keep you healthy. That’s all.”

“She’s not sick then?” he asked, turning his head to look up at him, his large, brown eyes watery from his fright.

“Not at all,” he promised. “She’s perfectly fine and you’ll see her Monday morning for class just the same as usual. I’ll just explain that there was a mix up. No harm done.”

Neal nodded and pulled away after a moment, then, wiping at his eyes with the sleeve of his shirt, turned back to him, seriously. “But why were they in our stuff?”


	50. Three Sentence Prompts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The promptfest that launched Grungebelle. These are the rest of the prompts you didn't see. :)

_Rumbelle, mermaid AU  
_

 

The sound of a large splash behind their small boat at first made him nervous, but as the minutes ticked by and there was no sign of any fish — big or small — to be seen, Gold relaxed once more, settling down next to his son, fishing pole in hand and ready to cast out. 

“Lovely day for a swim,” a voice called out and, startled at the new voice in the middle of a mangrove forest, they both spun around to see the most beautiful woman Gold had ever seen hanging onto the stern, arms casually crossed and her head tilted to the side as she studied them.

The golden tail splashing in the water behind her was an even bigger surprise.

* * *

_WWII AU_

It was the rustling of the bushes on the other side of the barbed wire that startling Rum first, waking him up out of his hunger-induced stupor until he sat, alert and ready for either the bullets or bread that would surely come. Their mysterious benefactor was a beautiful, blue-eyed woman - not much more than a girl really, too young to risk her life in such a dangerous way - and she passed a small packet of food through the fence with the promise to bring more the next night if she was able. Rum made Bae eat first before he would even think of taking a crumb for himself.

* * *

_Southern Decadence in New Orleans_

Belle put the finishing touches of gold body paint on the Grand Marshall’s backside with a deft swirl of her paintbrush then stepped back, arms crossed under her bare breasts, to admire her handiwork. “You’re all set, Mr. Gold,” she said with a smirk. She handed the brush to him with a wink and a “Now you do me.”

* * *

_Rumbelle race car team_

“You got this, dearie,” Rum “The Beast” Gold told her through her ear piece, his roughened voice coming through even though the roar of the engine was nearly deafening inside her car. “Last quarter mile now; I want you to take Hook from the inside, but watch him, he’s liable to pull something dirty.” 

Gold smiled as he observed the race from his stand in the pit as his protege, Belle “The Beauty of the Indy” French, easily overtook the arrogant bad boy of the racetrack - she had this win in the bag, until Hook swerved, sending Belle’s car flipping end over end into the green.

 

_Racer!Rumbelle, Gold runs onto the track before he's even though about it to pull Belle from the car._

“Belle!” he screamed into his headset, but there was no reply, her own microphone had cut out after the crash, it shouldn’t have, but it did, and Gold ripped the earphones from his head and leapt from the platform, not minding the screaming of his ankle when he landed. 

The cars still on the track, still in the race, were zooming by at 200 mph and trying to cross now was like playing a particularly deadly game of Frogger, but Gold didn’t give a shit, couldn’t give a shit when Belle was trapped in that burning car. 

The paramedics were already on scene when he finally cleared the last lane.

 

_Ookay, what happened after Belle's Car flipped?!?!_

 

Gold ran as fast as he could towards the wreckage, cursing his bum ankle the entire way. The paramedics had already cut through the steel doors with their “jaws of life” and were working on pulling Belle out as safely as possible when he limped up, shoving his way past medics and camera crew, crying out for his driver. 

Finally, he came to a skidding halt next to the smoking pile of junk, he saw her laid out on the burnt grass, and just as he was about to fall down next to her, she opened her sky blue eyes — now bloodshot from the blackened smoke — and told him seriously, “I demand a rematch,” before passing back out.

* * *

_Anyelle of your choice in a floating city_

 

“Are you _sure_ we’re allowed to be here?” the girl asked, her eyes bluer than the sky below them and a smile brighter than the fucking twin suns that shone down on this shite system.

“Fuck if I know,” Danny replied, looking around a corner for sentries or anything that might trip an alarm. “But I know a manky cunt that owes me some credits and I mean to find ‘im even if I have to search every fucking castle floating over this shite planet.”

* * *

_Dark castle rumple disguised as belle for whatever reason_

  


“How in the hell are you supposed to breathe in this thing, Dearie!” Rumplestiltskin called out as he yanked at the back of her dress  — now his dress — down towards his hips. “It’s constricting and swishy between the legs, I can’t walk without stumbling.”

Belle stared at him over the top of her book, blinked, then burst out laughing before she smirked at him, “Have a good time tonight, and don’t forget, I’m a maiden and I intend to stay that way. At least for now,” she muttered under her breath.

* * *

  _Time travel Nostelle_

Belle should have been frightened after being transported roughly fifteen hundred years past her estimated arrival date and found herself dumped in a bog near a tiny weem that housed a wild man with long matted hair and wearing nothing but a roughly woven kilt of some sort. 

She should have been scared out of her wits and activated emergency protocol as she’d been instructed to should such an event occur.

But the man was gentle with her for all his brutish posturing and, after the second week in his company, Belle found herself contemplating smashing her emergency wristlet between two rocks.

* * *

_Prompt: Postcards?_

 

The picture was a shot of the skyline at dusk, the purple outline of the skyscrapers contrasting with the inky blackness of the night’s sky above and the orange glow of the streetlights below. _She’d made it safely out of town_ , he thought, grateful for that small relief and the hope that Belle would be happy now that she was away from Storybrooke for good.

He flipped it over to the back where she’d written in neat script, “Wish you were here.”

* * *

_Prompt: Morning tea._

 

“You’re in early, Mr. Gold,” she said, her blue eyes smiling at him even though he’d just stomped his way into the diner, letting in a pile of snow for her to mop up before it became a hazard.

Gold found himself staring at her for longer than was polite, momentarily forgetting why he was even in the diner in the first place and that her sweet smiles weren’t for him, not really.

“Uh…” he began stupidly before mentally shaking himself awake, “tea, please.”

 

_Prompt: Sweet Tooth_

 

“What’s this?” he asked suspiciously, staring down at the thick slice of apple pie with a frown.

“It’s early, but you looked like you could use something sweet to go with your tea,” Belle told him with a bright smile, leaning her forearms on the counter — almost daring him to refuse the offering.

He grabbed his fork and jabbed at the pie, stuffing a large bite into his mouth before he could tell her that she was sweeter than any pie.

_Prompts!!! I can give you prompts! 1) Rumple in a box 2) Belle and Rumple go see Star Wars in costume 3) Rumbelle poetry slam 4) giraffes 5) really need new chairs_

 

The stools at the counter had needed to be repaired for a long time but customers had figured out that you had get up in a certain way lest the jagged vinyl edges tear a hole in their clothes. Gold might have blamed Belle and her kindness for his distraction, but he knew that it was his own fault for forgetting the technique entirely.

“Oh… oh dear,” she whispered, staring at his backside with terrified eyes. “I-I’m so sorry, Mr Gold, they’re ripped.”

 

_#4 Giraffe_

Belle covered her mouth in an effort not to laugh, but it was an exercise in futility when she looked away from the gaping tear in Gold’s pants to his horrified face. “We have some clothes in the lost and found that you can borrow, Mr. Gold, if you like,” she told him when she was sure she had her laughter under control.

He nodded silently, his hair falling forward to cover the excruciating embarrassment in his eyes. Belle wanted to tell him that she would never tell a soul that he wore boxers with tiny cartoon giraffes on them, but she suspected he would prefer that she didn’t mention it at all.

 

  _#1 Rumple in a box._

“I honestly thought we had something you could use,” she said, apologizing for what seemed like the hundredth time as she fussed over him.

Gold wanted to evaporate out of existence right then and there, rather than have Belle see him in such an undignified state, but he would have given his entire fortune to keep the tears that were swimming in her eyes from falling. His ripped trousers already disposed of, he pulled the cardboard box up higher around his waist and said, with as much dignity as he could muster, “Well… it’s not the first time I’ve been caught without my trousers.”

 

_Prompt: Blue Jeans_

“I thought you didn’t have anything,” he said as he fumbled with the pair of jeans she hastily thrust into his hands, the box slipping dangerously low as he grappled with them.

“I change into my uniform when I get here,” she told him, gesturing to her short red skirt. “Those are mine.”

 

_Prompt: Roses_

He looked at the roses embroidered onto the back pockets then turned away, tugging his jacket down to hide them — fruitlessly it turned out as they poked out a bit underneath. Belle had earnestly reassured him that they were close to the same size and that her jeans had “an incredible amount of Lycra in them, they’ll stretch” to accommodate his… bits that the manufacturer didn’t take into account when the jeans were designed. And it was only for three minutes, just until he reached his shop.

“Anything’s better than a box,” he told her with a self-deprecating shake of his head, the relief in her eyes worth the humiliation of having flowers emblazoned across his ass.

 

_Gold returns Belle's pants the next day- people make assumptions._   


He presented her with the borrowed jeans — freshly laundered and neatly folded — before he realized that he wasn’t the only customer inside Granny’s that morning and their exchange was garnering a lot of unwanted attention. Belle seemed to think nothing of it, merely thanking him with a soft smile as she took the jeans and his order.

The repulsed and bewildered looks of diners near him made Gold feel dirty and, after a moment’s thought, he left before his eggs were ready, leaving enough money for breakfast and a tip.

 

_During her break, Belle decides to swing by Gold's work (food potentially in hand)._

When the bell on his shop door rang out an hour later, Gold heaved a weary sigh before he hauled himself up out of his chair and trudged his way to the front only to stop short when he saw who was waiting for him.

Belle was standing in the center of his shop with a takeout box held in both of her small hands and an irritated look on her face. “You forgot your breakfast.”

 

_(would you be willing to do a Swan Queen prompt?) Late night at work_

Regina looked up from the paperwork on her desk as Emma came stumbling into the mayor’s office. She’d been tapped to sit second seat at a stake out and had just gotten off shift after a boring night watching the docks for smuggling activity.

“You’ll never believe what I just witnessed at Granny’s,” Emma told her as she Regina’s coffee in front of her. “Nearly made up missing our date yesterday.”

 

 


	51. My Fair Lady

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: “I’m not pretty, I look like an ugly, dirty rat.”

“You look… pretty,” Gold said when Belle finally emerged from the makeup trailer, picking her way down the narrow metal steps with care. He’d been waiting for her for almost an hour while the makeup artist layered on the fake grime and dirt that helped define her character.

His costar snorted at him as she fluffed out the ragged dress she wore. “I’m not pretty, I look like an ugly, dirty rat,” she told him with a cheeky grin. “I’ve been doing this for so many years, but it’s still weird to film out of sequence. Our first scene is actually out last.” Her grin faded somewhat until she looked away, biting her lip.

He looked away from her, momentarily stunned by her sweet beauty. They’d been filming for four months straight and preparing for it longer than that, but no matter how much time he’d spent with her, he still felt like he was drowning in her presence. Falling in love had never been in his contract.

“Yes, well, only two more weeks and this scene will be in the can.” He straightened up and followed her as they walked through the maze of trailers towards their sound stage. “Then it’s a wrap,” he said, quietly.

She stopped in her tracks and stared straight ahead, wide-eyed and pale even through the thick makeup she wore, then glanced up at him nervously. “But after that we’ll have to do the media rounds. Press and talk shows and premiers… and, you know. The stuff.”

He chuckled a bit at that. He was notorious for hating “the stuff”, but if he managed to do some of the press rounds with Belle, then he’d do it gladly. He’d have to have his agent talk to hers. Discreetly.

The public backlash when the movie was announced was overwhelming, only intensifying when Belle French and Rupert Gold were cast in the lead roles. Neither one of them had been known for their musical abilities before and Gold’s fame had already been waning when he auditioned for the part. Still, they were cast amid much publicity and both of them immediately dove into voice lessons, needing to strengthen any natural ability had. The original movie was so well loved that entire websites were devoted to hating the new movie and Belle had received so much hostility that she had to close her Twitter account, a thing Gold was glad he never bothered with before. Everything was riding on their performances and they felt the pressure all too well.

They met one of the director’s assistants at the door to sound stage 4, who was waiting with a clipboard in one hand, the other pressed to her ear as someone spoke to her through a microphone. “They’re waiting for y’all now,” she told them, with a glance at her watch.

Gold took a deep breath and let it out slowly, trying to forget that he was an actor with a hopeless infatuation on his charming costar. He was a stodgy English professor. Aloof and brash and… hopelessly infatuated with his pupil.

He turned to her, holding out an arm. “Are you ready, Miss Doolittle,” he asked, his Scottish accent now a clipped and formal English, every syllable precise and cutting.

Belle bobbed a curtsy before taking his arm and replied in a Cockney that took three months with a voice coach to perfect, “Always ready, Professah ‘iggins.”

They walked into the dark sound stage, each of them dreading the end of the production.


	52. The Break Up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I want you to look at me the way you look at him.”

_Hnnnnn… Hair looks good. Extra floofy. Soft._

_Pink shirt today. Bold choice. Nice._

_Stupid tie though. Shame._

_Shit, shit shit! He’s coming this way. Look away! Look away!_

Belle quickly turned her head from the window where she’d been gazing out at Mr. Gold, who had just crossed the street, heading towards the diner where she was currently sitting with her boyfriend, Will. Well, not really her _boyfriend_. Not _officially_. Not _exclusively_ , though neither of them had dated anyone else for months. It was supposed to be fun and casual. It was quickly turning into something routine and kind of morose.

“I want you to look at me the way you look at him.”

“What?” Belle looked up at him, puzzled.

He was leaning forward with his hands in his lap and his chest pressed against the edge of the table, staring at her as if she had two heads. “ _Geez_ , Belle,” he muttered with a tired shake of his head. 

She straightened up, ready for another round of  “You’re not paying enough attention to me.” It was a game she could never win because she didn’t, in fact, pay much attention to him.

The door opened and Belle gave herself a mental pat on the back for not turning around to see if the new customer was Gold or not. She thought it was. He usually came in for lunch right about this time. Same as her.

Funny that.

She only glanced out of the corner of her eye to see him take a seat at the counter, his back towards her and she relaxed minutely, free to gaze at him all she wanted.

Will tapped his fingers on the top of the table in an irritating beat. “ _Hello_?”

Again, she pulled her attention away from Gold to focus on Will. God she was such an asshole to him. Why? He was actually really nice.

“Sorry,” she said with a guilty twist of a smile. She was sorry. Sorry she was hurting her friend’s feelings. Sorry she started this entire thing with Will. It was a stupid decision on both their parts, but she was definitely the one making a mess of things.

“Why don’t you just talk to him instead of staring holes in his suits,” he told her, leaning back in the booth. “Just do it.”

Caught out, she swallowed nervously and decided to bluff. “Talk to who?” she asked, primly straightening her fork and knife on the paper napkin.

He sighed, quite dramatically Belle thought, and rolled his eyes. “Talk to Gold. You stare at him as if he was made out of chocolate.”

Her mouth dropped a fraction of an inch, feeling a heated flush rise up from her collarbone because, while she didn’t think that _at all_ , chocolate + Gold = panty explosion and it sent her blood racing until she could only vaguely make out the sounds of Will’s voice warbling in her ear, ‘Wah wah wah wah wah.’

“Chocolate isn’t good for such activities,” she replied slowly, still feeling a bit stunned.

“Isn’t good for what kind of activities, Belle?” Will asked, pointedly.

She shook herself out of her hormone-laden reverie to look at him, her eyes trying to focus on him when she wanted to just look at Gold. “Um. Tennis?”

He threw his napkin on the table in disgust and scooted out of the booth. “I’m done,” he said, putting one hand on the table and the other onto the back of her seat. “I don’t understand why you’re with _me_ when you want _him_. I know this wasn’t something permanent, but the least you can do is pay attention to me when we’re out rather than mooning over some guy you don’t have the guts to speak to. It’s ridiculous,” he hissed in her ear before straightening up and walking away.

The door slammed shut, causing everyone to turn and look first at Will’s retreating form, then at Belle who was staring hotly at her place setting.

She blew her hair out of her face and slid down the seat until her feet touched the table leg, stopping her from completely disappearing underneath it. Then she made a face when she realized what just happened.

Oh _god_ , he was right. Will was right. She treated him poorly like an afterthought and now she would be dateless for Valentine’s Day. Again.

She took a peek at Gold, catching him just as he glanced away from her. She mucked everything up and now the man probably thought her an idiot.

As quietly as possible, she slid out of the booth and left after leaving a large tip for Ruby having wasted her time by not ordering anything.

She made it to just around the corner before she stopped and leaned over to the side until she could just peek in the window to see if Mr. Gold was still in the diner and, if he was, maybe she could work up the courage to talk to him.  

He was gone.


	53. Just a Little Change

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I am completely in love with you, you idiot.”

Rumplestiltskin stood at the tower window watching the road for any sign of Belle. He had stood there nearly all day. Waiting and hoping — both that she would come back and that she would stay away. He feared her more than he’d feared anything before in his life and considering the life he’d led up until now, that was saying something. He feared his growing feelings for her and that he might forget his mission: finding Bae.

The daylight had long faded to dusk and he was just about to give up — there was a bottle of fire-whiskey waiting for him in his rooms and all he wanted to do was crawl in it and try to forget — when a flash of blue caught his eye. There! At the bend in the road. She was practically flying in her hurry to get back and he wondered if she was being chased or if she was actually eager to see him. Him, of all people.

His heart sped up as he watched her approach to the gates and he held his breath until she touched the cold rails to push it open, stepping foot on the cobbled path leading up to the Dark Castle.

It all came out in a whoosh and Rumplestiltskin found himself lightheaded. Certainly it felt like he was floating even as he turned and sped down the twisty stairway to the great room below, heart in his throat and a feeling of incredulous hope surging through his veins.

He stood there, indecisive. His spinning wheel beckoned to him and he started towards it for a moment before stopping again. He could play it off that he hadn’t been waiting for her all day long, but then he’d still have to face her and the fact that she’d come back.

Why did she do that? What did it mean?

The front door creaked open just then and Rumplestiltskin did the thing that came naturally to him. He waved a hand and disappeared leaving behind only a trail of purple mist.

* * *

Belle checked the spinning room first, setting the basket of straw next to the spinning wheel (useless task when he had rooms full of the stuff already), then the tower room, then his chambers and the kitchens and, when those rooms turned up empty, the small child’s room she’d found a week ago.

She stood in the doorway, barely seeing it as she wondered where he might have gone off to. Had someone called out to him for help in exchange for a priceless artifact? Possible. Had he run away from her? Likely.

She heaved a great sigh, a bit more dramatic than she was prone to, but she’d been so full of emotion that she’d felt ready to burst with it, but now there was no one here to share it with.

Tired now and cranky, feeling let down and abandoned, she stomped towards the kitchens to make herself something to eat, but, as she stood in front of the pantry, nothing appealed to her. She slammed the cupboard door closed and stomped back upstairs to the great room.

Muttering under her breath, she pulled he book she’d hidden out from underneath the cushions on the settee Rumple had conjured up for her use, but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t concentrate on the words. She was looking up and around every few seconds, waiting for him to reappear from wherever he had gone to. Expecting him at any moment to come back with something awful in his hands, a maniacal giggle in his throat, and no excuse whatsoever.

Irritated with herself for expecting the impossible, she set her book to the side and stood up, primly smoothing down her skirts.

“I am completely in love with you, you idiot,” she called out, just in case he was lurking somewhere unseen. “And I think you love me, too.”

She turned in a small circle, eyes and ears tuned to any sign of him, but he just. Wasn’t. There.

Hands fisted at her sides and chin lifted in defiance, she called out again, “I mean it, Rumplestiltskin! I love you.”

No answer.

She stood there, waiting for half an hour, hoping that he would come, but when the small clock on the side table struck the hour, her shoulders slumped and she bowed her head.

She had been so full of bravado and hope, but she didn’t know if she could do it again. She would have to give it some time. Maybe she would gather up the courage in a month or so.

Belle set the room to rights and banked the fire for the night, but before she went to her room, she made a small detour to Rumplestiltskin’s chambers where he’d hidden a small bottle of fire-whiskey. Fishing it out from underneath his mattress, she held it up to the light coming in from the window to find it more than half full. More than enough to get rip roaring drunk.

She’d keep the rest hostage until he stopped running away from her.


	54. Illumination

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I know your secret.”

“I know your secret.”

It was whispered in his ear, the words ghosting over him in a warm breath that tickled in places he’d long thought dormant.

_Belle_.

He turned his head a fraction, his cheek bumping against her nose before he pulled away. Why was she so close?

She sat next to him, her knees touched up against his leg and her hands, hot and dry, took the spindle from him as if he wasn’t the most powerful creature in all the realms and held his own pressed between her palms. He blinked at them, at her, confused by all this sudden touching.

“And what secret is that?” he challenged. He had may secrets and he couldn’t fathom which one she thought she’d discovered. He swallowed heavily and waited for illumination.

She sucked in a breath and he leaned in instinctively needing to be closer somehow. He licked his lips, suddenly aware of how dry they were and how close she was and how, if he ducked his head, he would be able to brush them against her lips.

“You love me,” she told him, her eyes clear and guileless looking up at him with wonder, her mouth parted as she smiled in helpless amazement.

No one had ever looked at him like that before and it felt like a punch to the gut. He should pull back. He should deny everything and leave her to her delusions, but he was trapped by her soft gaze. It wasn’t _the_ secret, but it was almost as important as the one that had driven him for three hundred years. He’d reached a crossroads he’d never expected in all his long life and he didn’t know what to do.

His own breath was coming out in ragged bursts. “And, uh, what makes you think that?”

“Because I love you, too,” she whispered hoarsely before leaning into press her lips against his.

Light burst around them as they kissed, the illumination that he’d sought, and Rumplestiltskin sighed as he blindly accepted the one thing he’d sworn never to do. He loved another.


	55. Never Been Kissed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “What do you mean, ‘never been kissed’?”

Belle had acted upon many strange notions in her life. Sky diving. Moving all the way across the globe to a small fishing town in Maine. That time she snuck out of the house and made it almost to the next territory before being picked up by the police and sent back to her father. Her overprotective, overbearing, overwhelming father. She’d lived most of her life almost a prisoner and, once she was free, Belle vowed never to be under anyone’s autocratic thumb again.

She’d saved up every penny she could and applied for a visa in secret. The day she got it was the day she left and she never looked back. Now, free of his rule, she wore trousers and short skirts and shaved her armpits and legs and walked alone down a street whenever she wanted to. It was amazing how those little things felt so foreign and ordinary at once.

Her cloistered upbringing had left her unprepared for life outside of her father’s house and she found it was difficult to make friends and even harder to find love. She was interested, but had no idea how to proceed beyond what the movies and books told her, but books were fantastical and not real life.

She’d escaped, but she was just as lonely as she was before. The only difference was she controlled her solitude, not her father.

Setting kissing booth to alleviate the problem of never having been kissed was probably her craziest idea, but it seemed like a good solution at the time..

She sat alert with her hands folded in front of her at the Miner’s Day Fair, waiting for her first customer. People had been passing her booth for half an hour since the start of the festival, but no one had taken the time to actually read what her hand lettered sign said. They just saw her sitting there with her strong box and assumed she was there on library business.

Well, she was there for the library — all proceeds went towards new books — but mostly she was there for the smooching. She’d anticipated it for weeks and spent hours online researching the best methods to use for both quick pecks and lingering lip locking. She felt prepared and even had a mental list of preferred customers she hoped would pay her booth a visit. As well as a mental list of those she would only be pecking no matter how much money they slipped in the donation box.

She was beginning to wonder about Storybrooke’s literacy rate as minutes ticked by without any takers and she was beginning to feel stupid for even trying. Maybe she should just hire someone to kiss her.

Mr. Gold passed by, giving her a quick smile as he glanced at her, then another, stronger stare as he came to a halt, his eyes scanning the placard on her booth over and over again as if he couldn’t believe what it sad. His mouth dropped open as if he was going to say something but nothing came out.

Quick pecks = $1

Kisses = $3

Frenching = Ask for Prices

All proceeds go Towards the Library!

Well, he could certainly read.

Belle smiled as welcomingly as she could, hoping her lip gloss would hold up against the coming activity. Mr. Gold was at the very top of her Definitely Would Tongue list and, if he could be her first kiss, she would count the entire experiment as huge success.

He stepped closer, his hand a white-knuckled grip on his cane, and cleared his throat. “Um, Miss French?” he choked out, gesturing toward the advertisement.

“Yes, Mr. Gold?”

“Um…”

“Did you want a kiss?” she asked, blinking up at him hopefully.

He glanced around, looking for something, but she just waited as patiently as she could, her nerves revving up to light speed as he made up his mind.

 _Come on and do it_ , she mentally screamed at him. _Kiss me! Kiss me! Kiss me!_

Is this for real?” he asked incredulously.

She sighed a breath of relief because if he stayed to talk then he was certainly hooked. “Yes, it’s real, Mr. Gold. Do you want to, uh, buy anything?”

He glanced over at the sign once more and she could clearly see his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed against whatever it was he was feeling.  


“I won’t bite,” she told him with a grin.

Biting was definitely an add on though. It was on her own secret menu.

He blinked at her and gave a startled, breathless laugh. “I wouldn’t expect that, Miss French.”

Bummer.

Another thick Adam’s apple bobbing swallow and another step closer. Belle pushed the cash box towards him with a finger.

“You’d be my first,” she told him, truthfully.

His forehead wrinkled in confusion. “No one’s kissed you yet?” he asked. “People should be lined up.”

She shrugged her shoulders sheepishly — a bit thrilled at the inadvertent compliment — and waited. Her patience was wearing thin in the face of impending mouth to mouth and if he walked away now she might have to firebomb his shop later.

He licked his lips, watching as her eyes followed and he gave her a tentative smile.

“You wouldn’t mind?” he asked, his voice sounding a bit wobbly.

“Definitely not, Mr. Gold,” she replied, her own voice trembling a little. “I would like it, in fact,” she added, willing him to just do it already.

He stepped closer and closer until he was pressed up against the booth and she stood up, slowly to meet him. She wore boots with the tallest heels, but she still had to stand on tiptoe to reach him.

He leaned in and lightly pressed his lips against hers, sending a shock through her veins at the sensation of actual human contact. She gasped against his mouth and he quickly pulled away with a mumbled apology.

She blinked her eyes open to see Mr. Gold staring at her uneasily. His face was flushed red, but his eyes kept lingering on her mouth.

“Why did you stop, Mr. Gold?” she asked him, breathlessly. Did she do it wrong? Maybe she should have prepared feedback cards for people to fill out.

“You-you made a noise.”

“I’m told noises are typically welcome in these circumstances.”

He laughed a bit, shaking his head a bit before his eyes were drawn back to her lips. “They are,” he agreed. He bowed his head, letting his long hair fall over his face. He reached into his jacket to pull out his wallet — payment due — when she stopped him with her own candid forthrightness.

“And you were my first kiss! I’m happy it was you.”

His eyes shot up to gawk at her in confusion as he dropped his wallet on the table. “What do you mean? You’ve… _never_ been kissed?”

She shook her head, long past feeling ashamed of it now. That had left her years ago.

“Why?”

Well, that was a difficult question to answer wasn’t it? She’d often thought about seeing Dr. Hopper about her childhood, but she also thought she would spend half the time trying to get the psychologist to stick his tongue down her throat and so she never bothered.

“I had what you would call a very strict upbringing,” she told him. It wasn’t a lie in the least, but left things unsaid just the same.

“And I was…? But that wasn’t— I mean, it could have been better.”

A noise escaped her as she stared up at him with watery eyes. “I-I’m sorry, Mr. Gold. I don’t know how. Maybe if I practice with—”

“No, no, no,” he interrupted, hurrying to stop her before she said something stupid. “I mean, I could have made it better for you. Not the other way around. Your first kiss should be special.”

She sniffled as she looked up at him. “Says who?”

“Says me,” he replied. He glanced back at the sign. “Can I?”

She nodded at him wordlessly, her breath held in anticipation.

He stared at her as he bit the tip of his gloved finger and slowly pulled it off his hand, then he drew off the other and slapped them both against the top of her booth with a solid smack, his breath coming out in soft, panting soughs.

Belle licked her lips, her heart pounding until she was nearly light-headed, waiting for him to make a move.

He shooked his hair out of the way, then carefully brushed the backs of his fingers against the side of her face down to her jawline before gently cupping her cheek.

Belle’s eyes fluttered closed as his breath ghosted over her then she gasped again as he lightly brushed a kiss at the corner of her mouth. His lips, dry and a bith chapped, slid over her bottom lip to the other corner where he pressed another soft buss before moving steadily up her jawline to her ear here he nuzzled her with his nose.

“You deserve so much more than this, Belle,” he whispered. “You should be laid out on a bed of rose petals and worshiped until your voice grows hoarse and your legs are too weak to stand”

She made another indistinct sound at the sound of his voice whispering naughty things to her — things that would have had her locked in her room five years ago, but that was then and this was now and she reached up with trembling fingers, dug her hands in his hair and yanked at him until her mouth was firmly pressed against his.

His muffled sound of surprise encouraged her and she licked at him, hurriedly until he opened his mouth to her, letting her explore him as much as she liked.

She liked it a lot, it turned out, dipping her tongue in his mouth to taste Mr. Gold, the most forbidden man in town, and he tasted of danger and sex and a great deal of need that sent her head whirling. The kiss was sloppy and their teeth clashed together more than they probably should have, but she refused to let go of him as she stroked his soft hair at his neck and held him to her.

Oh, but these kisses were sending lightning bolts through her veins, a complete rush of adrenaline and lust that left her shaking by the time she pulled away, gasping for breath, and stared at him with wide, muddled eyes, completely riveted.

He looked no better, his hair mussed beyond recognition and his lips swollen from kissing her, he leaned in to follow her as she pulled away, but caught himself just in time. Flustered and undone, they stared at each other, until he remembered himself and their surroundings and, with a blink of an eye, he roughly straightened his hair with a shaking hand and apologized to her profusely.

“I, um, I should probably go,” he said, making no move to leave.

Belle nodded her head, mutely, still trying to control her breathing and her hormones and the urge to jump over the booth and tackle him right there in the town square because if that was how he kissed, then the way he made love must be _amazing_ and if she had to set up a fucking booth in the hopes to attract him to her then she would do it, but only if he promised to be the _first_.

“I’m glad it was you,” she told him again with a crooked sort of smile that didn’t quite feel right on her face.

He gaped at her, disbelief clearly written on his face before he replied ardently, “I’m glad it was me, too.”

* * *

_Kissing Booth prompt: Belle returns Gold's wallet, but feels entitled to another kiss as a reward.  
_

 

Belle hummed to herself as she trotted across the street to Mr. Gold’s shop from the hardware store just up the road. She stepped lightly, a cool breeze feathering her hair out behind her like a banner, an oversized bag slapping against her side and a large grin that told the world she’d just been thoroughly kissed and she was glad of it.

She had been kissed. Thoroughly and completely. First by Mr. Gold, then by a dozen men and three women, all to varying degrees of success, but as intriguing as the experience had been, no one had curled her toes quite like Gold. Gold with his soft brown eyes and an unexpected tenderness in her time of need. And a wicked pair of lips that needed to be licked. By her specifically.

The bell above his door jangled as she burst into his shop and she should have been embarrassed at intruding like that if it wasn’t for the surprised and elated way he looked at her when he turned around from behind the counter.

“Miss French!” he said after a second’s pause, blinking at her as if she brought in the sunshine with her.

“Hey, Mr. Gold!” she said, smiling at him brightly. It was impossible not to smile now. She stepped into the showroom fully, closing the door behind her with a ‘snick’.

He licked his lips, whether an unconscious act or in remembrance of yesterday’s colossal events, she didn’t know, but she did hope he was preparing for another go ‘round.

“What, um, can I help you with? Today,” he finished with a small smirk and Belle knew then that whatever plans he had that afternoon, they were now canceled.

“Well, I came to return your wallet, first?” she said, drawing it out of her bottomless pit of a purse and handing it to him.

He took it from her, his fingers grazing hers and sending another delicious jolt to her toes where it bounced around a bit before zooming back up through her body until it landed at her cheeks, which were beginning to flush.

“Thank you,” he said, pocketing it.

“I didn’t - I didn’t take anything out of it,” she told him. “But I, ah, I did take a peek at your driver’s license?”

It was his turn to blush and he pressed his lips together for a moment before he replied with a quiet, “I see,” then, “I suppose you have questions?”

She did. Tons of them and she’d started a list, but none of them pertained to his rather unconventional first name though she was morbidly curious. “Was it done on purpose then?”

He chuckled, a bit nervously, before beckoning her towards the back room. She trailed after him, through the velvet curtains and into a veritable Aladdin’s cave. She looked around her in amazement at the trinkets and bric-a-brac he had scattered about in various states of disrepair. It was a wonder he got anything done with all the small treasures his shop held and she found herself stepping forward past him to pick up a small teacup that had a large chip in the rim.

“I can’t believe you have all this stuff,” she said, smiling at him out of the corners of her eye.

He looked about unseeingly it all and perhaps he’d become inured to the sheer wonder of it all after being around it day in and day out.  He crossed his arms and leaned back against a desk that looked as if it needed to be cleared of its paperwork and then used in a disgraceful way.

“My name was supposed to be Bartholomew Arnold,” he began to Belle’s surprise. “Which were the names of my two grandfathers.”

Oh. Right. The driver’s license. She regretted peeking now.

“So what happened?” she asked, trying and failing to picture this man going by Bartholomew. Or Bart, she thought, wrinkling her nose in distaste. No, absolutely not.

“My mother apparently was… out of it after the whole ordeal of giving birth and, when she was given the forms to fill out, made such a mess of it that I was irrevocably named, well, that.”

“And no one asked?” Because she would have asked for sure.

He gave her a curt, “nope,” and clammed up tight.

”Well, for what it’s worth, Barnold isn’t the worst name I’ve heard,” she told him. “And you have a lovely last name. _Gold_ ,” she breathed, coming closer to where he was perched on the desk.

He eyed her warily. “Yeah, but it _rhymes_.”

“So what? It’s a nice name. And if you want to know a secret, Belle isn’t my full name.” Another tiny step forward, one large step towards making out.

He noticed her approach and straightened up, watching her for any signs of betrayal. “What’s your name?”

She made a sour face. “Bluebelle. It makes me sound like a milk cow.”

He stared at her for a moment before snickering softly, which caught her off guard and sent her into a fit of giggles that carried over to him and sent him until she found herself laughing face first into his waistcoat, his strong hands holding her waist, firm and steady and when her laughter died down and she realized where she was and who she was with and why she’d come all of a sudden it wasn’t funny anymore.

She breathed him in, the scent of him having eluded her the night before when they were outside, but here, in his shop, where everything around him practically screamed of Mr. Gold.

Oh, but coming here was the most brilliant plan she’d ever conceived and she lifted her head from his chest and the sped up heartbeat underneath it to look up at him. She’d worn her kitten heels that day, and, even though Gold wasn’t the tallest man of her acquaintance, he still towered over her. But that was okay, because she planned ahead and made a stop at the hardware store before coming to the pawnshop.

“I’ve been thinking, Mr. Gold,” she told him in all seriousness, eyeing his tie for a second before gazing up at him. “That since I returned your wallet, that I deserve a reward.”

His forehead creased and his eyes squinted tightly as she spoke, but he must have known what she meant because there was a hint of a glorious smirk on his mouth and Belle was left with the heady thought of trying to kiss it off of him.

His fingers impulsively clenched at her waist, tugging her closer. “And what do you think would be a sufficient reward for such a good deed, Miss French?”

She pulled back out of his arms, a bit reluctantly she would admit, and reached into her bag. She smiled at him as she pulled out a smallish, reddish, hinged contraption that she pried open with both hands until it popped into shape.

“A _stool_?” he asked in confusion, watching her as she placed it on the floor in front of his feet and then step up on it.

Yes, the stool with the kitten heels made her the perfect height to reach his mouth and she wrapped her arms around him, nuzzling his nose with hers before she drew back to say, “They tell me that you like to make deals and I have one to make with you.”

“Yeah?”

“Well,” she said, patting at his tie with a smirk. “I promise never to call you Barnold if you promise never to call me Bluebelle.”

His gold tooth flashed as he grinned at her. “Miss French, you got yourself a deal.”

“Call me Belle,” she murmured as she yanked him forward and captured his mouth with hers.


	56. Foam

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> be-a-warrior-not-a-worrier
> 
> *clears throat* Finding the best cappuccino in the world and foam beards/noses *leaves ginning*

“You have a bit of foam on your-your lip,” Gold told her after watching her drink from her cup for three minutes.

The woman looked up at him, her blue eyes startled at his voice and her mouth hanging open before the tip of her pink tongue darted out to lick at the corner of her mouth.

“No, it’s…” He circled his mouth with a finger. “All over.”

Her face flushed prettily, turning a shade of pink that was much more charming than the lurid vinyl hearts in the windows of the coffee shop they were sitting in.

“I— Yeah, it’s a bit foamy, cappuccinos,” she said, self-consciously wiping at her mouth with a paper napkin.

“I have heard that they are,” he said in mock seriousness, his eyes giving away the joke even as he trained his mouth into a stern line.

She giggled at  him, shaking her head helplessly. “Well, I appreciate the help anyway,” she said with a brilliant smile. “And, uh, if you want, I’ll treat you to one yourself,” she added, shyly.

He blinked at her then gave her a small smile himself, taken aback at her forwardness. He didn’t know how to tell her that he owned the coffee shop — not just this store, but the entire franchise the world over. He didn’t want to tell her, not even the employees knew who he was as he’d only stopped in on his way to a conference for a cup of coffee and to scout out how the store treated its customers. Going undercover, you might say.

“That’s very kind of you, Miss…”

“My name’s Belle,” she said, leaning over with her hand out. Her hair caught the light just then, the red highlights shining like a halo.

He took it, her grip refreshingly strong as he replied, “I’m Bartholomew.”

“Bartholomew! That’s quite a mouthful,” she said, leaning back again.

“So’s that coffee,” he told her, with a lift of a brow. His name had never been a favorite of his, but the way Belle’s pretty lips shaped the vowels made him almost like it.

Her eyes smiled at him as she lifted her cup and took a deliberately deep sip, the foam coating her upper lip shamelessly, gesturing with her other hand for him to take a seat.

He pulled the chair out and sat down, the conference forgotten as he watched this tiny slip of a woman go up and order a cappuccino and put another four dollars and seventy-five cents into his profits.

He’d get the next round.


	57. Floof 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fluffy prompt: The Dark Floof gets a haircut

In hindsight it was a bad idea to try to collect the sap from the Whomping Willow by himself, but Rumplestiltksin only had a short window to do it and he didn’t have time to find another person skilled enough to help. He was able to stun the tree long enough to drill the hole, but by the time he’d gathered enough sap and stoppered the bottle, the tree had recovered and he’d been covered in the sticky goo as well as an indignant blow to the jaw before he managed to get away.

Everyone knew it was impossible to Apparate into and out of Hogwarts, but the Dark One had no such restrictions and he disappeared in a puff of purple smoke then reappeared in the Dark Castle foyer.

He was covered in sap from his head down to his ridiculously tight pants and lace-up boots and the trail of sticky footprints he left was sure to raise the ire of his feisty maid, but he needed to get the sap into the potion while it was still fresh. If he waited even five more minutes, it would be too late and he’d have to start all over again.

If only he remembered where the knot of wood that froze the tree mid-strike was located, that would solve his problems.

He had just finished applying the three drops of sap to the bubbling liquid when he heard the indignant shouting of his maid five floors below.

Three minutes later, the door to his workroom flung open with a bang and she was standing in the doorway with her hands on her hips and her face as red as the sap he’d just collected.

“Rumplestiltskin,” she began, her voice shaking with her fury, but it faded away once she stormed closer and got a good look at him. “What… happened?”

“Just a bit of sap, dearie,” he said, waving her off dismissively.

“That’s more than a bit if you ask me,” she replied, ignoring his muttered “I don’t” as she stepped closer. “It’s in your hair,” she said with dismay.

“Hmm? Yes, that will be a problem,” he told her absently as he stirred the cauldron. “Sticks to organic matter,” he explained.

“Like your skin?”

He glanced up at her, proud that she knew enough to keep up with him, but annoyed that she insisted on keeping the conversation going. She was quite distracting in that way. “No, that’ll be fine and I’m mostly covered, but it bonds to hair if it’s not washed off quickly enough.”

“Oh.”

She sounded sad so he looked up, worried. “Something the matter?”

“No!” she said, quickly. “No, it’s… it’s a shame is all.”

“Well, why’s that?” he asked, testily, already not liking where this was going.

“It’s already pretty stiff. It’ll have to be cut off,” she explained further at his blank stare.

That gave him pause for a moment, but he recovered quickly and looked away. He hadn’t thought about that, he’d been too intent on the sap to remember to wear protective gear. “It’s only hair.”

“Yeah, but—”

He looked up sharply, not liking the way her voice warbled. “But what?”

She shook her head sadly. “Nothing. You’re right it’s just hair.”

Well if that wasn’t unexpected. Was she upset over the mess or the hair? “Quite right, dearie,” he replied, poofing a pair of shears into his hands and handing them to her.

She took them from him with trembling fingers. “You want me to do it?” she faltered.

“I can’t very well reach the back can I?”

Twenty minutes later the results of Belle’s work lay at their feet and the sound of her sniffling was beginning to irritate him. He didn’t know why she would be so upset at the sight of his scalp. He imagined it was just as ugly as the rest of him, but she should be used to it by now.

“What’s the matter with you? Stop sniveling,” he told her, rubbing his hands against the stubble. 

“Sorry,” she said, softly, snuffling a bit. “I just-I just really liked your hair.”

He turned to her, one his hand on the back of his head and the other on the top and gawped at her. “My _hair_?”

“It’s nice. And floofy,” she explained with a blush.

He had no idea what she was talking about. “ _Floofy_?”

She fluffed her hands around her head, demonstrating. “Yeah, floofy. Soft, you know?”

He shook his head. “No.”

“Anyway, it’ll grow back, right?” she asked, setting the scissors down on the table.

“Of course!” And to demonstrate he snapped his fingers and his hair reappeared safe and sound and… floofy just as it had been before his unfortunate accident with the Whomping Willow.

Belle gasped in shock and then made an irritated noise in the back of her throat. “You mean you could have done that the entire time?” she asked, indignantly.

He gave her a high-pitched giggle and another, louder one as she stormed out of the workroom, muttering under her breath about troublesome wizards and their idiotic senses of humor. His grin faded after she left and, when he was sure she was gone, he pulled out the hand mirror he kept safe in a locked box and checked his appearance for any anomalies.

His hair was wiry and springy and sticking out a bit in its strange fashion and he couldn’t tell what Belle was talking about.

Floofy indeed.


	58. Bookmark

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fluffy Prompt? Belle finds out that Rumple kept a lock of her hair in one of his potions books after she left the Dark Castle

t’s not that she minded the work, she actually enjoyed following an obscure trail even if it was merely going from one cryptic clue in a musty, old book to another, but she couldn’t help but feel useless somehow. Her heart ached and her head hurt and her Rumple was gone, but still there was still so much to be done before she could rest.

She knew there was a vault, a Dark One vault spoken of in hushed whispers, but she didn’t know where to find it. She knew there wasn’t a book about it in the library he’d given her the first time. She would have remembered it if there had been.

In Rumple’s study, however, there were books of magic and spells and potions and necromancy that she’d never heard of before, all annotated in Rumple’s thin, spidery handwriting that she liked to trace with her fingers when she came across them, reminiscing about her first stay at the Dark Castle back when she was a young maiden intent on finding adventure.

She’d found it in a shy man disguised as an imp and an unlikely love that grew strong and pure and true, but not even that could overcome his fear of losing his power, his magic, his son — though she only learned of that decades later when he told her the truth and gave her a library. Again.

She had been rummaging through his workshop for three days before she found it poking out of a well-worn tome, heavy and the leather was rubbed to a shiny, smooth finish due to being handled often and with care. Belle remembered it. Rumplestiltskin kept it propped open in front of him while he worked, one of many books he used as a reference, but either it was his favorite or the most reliable. She never knew — he refused to tell her about anything of his that was magical no matter how many times she asked.

The thing that she noticed, though, was a long, thin blue ribbon and she knew that she’d never seen him use it before. It might have been something he’d only picked up after her short stay at the castle, but it was still crisp and free of dust as if he’d only just placed it within the pages and the blue was a match to the ribbons she used to wear in her hair when she was his maid.

She smiled fondly at it, flicking the ribbon with a finger before opening the book to the page it marked then gasped, holding a hand to her mouth as she realized that it wasn’t just a ribbon, but attached to a thin braid of her own hair which served as the bookmark. She lifted it up, inspecting it intently and wondering where he got it — how he got it. She’d never cut her hair in all the time she lived with him — not so much as a trim — nor had a hank gone missing unexpectedly. She would have noticed if a part of her hair was shorter than the rest, it must not have been stolen, but how he acquired it remained a mystery. She would have to ask him about it when she saw him again.

A glint of silver caught her eye and she brought it to the window so she could see it better and discovered that there were strands of his own hair woven in with hers, entwined together and bound with the ribbon and kept safe inside his favorite book.

How long had he used it, she wondered, running her thumb over the even bumps of the plaiting, feeling how smooth it was against her skin —silky and soft and she held it to her nose to see if it still held any of his scent, but that part of the magic must have worn off long ago..

She set it down and picked up the book to read where he had marked off, which page was so important that he used something so precious to keep his place?

Another shaky gasp, another soft sigh of wishful longing, and a resurgence of her flagging  hope on finding Rumplestiltskin again — and soon.

“True Love,” it read. The most powerful magic in all the worlds, it could break any curse. Well, she thought with a wry smile, she knew a bit about _that_.

She placed the braid back where she’d found it and then turned to the index to search for a locating spell.


	59. Cold Hands, Warm Heart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fluff prompt: Belle's hands are always cold and she's found the best way to warm them up is to stick them somewhere in Rumple/Gold's clothes.

Belle hummed to herself as she gathered the day’s flowers in her hands, the hot June sun beating down on her head and turning the bridge of her nose a shade of red that would have embarrassed her had she still been a lady. That didn’t matter much any more, the trappings of a more genteel life where the whiteness of one’s skin and the softness of one’s hands determined a woman’s worth. Instead she’d traded a life of respectability for one of luxury and adventure even if her title declined from Lady to Caretaker.

The castle she lived in was more opulent and comfortable than her own home, every want taken care of with a thought (and _that_ had been quite the shock at first) and all her needs met with an ease that had taken very little time to get used to. She may be a caretaker now and she may be a little sunburnt, but she lived a life of relative freedom ever since she’d come to the Dark Castle and she would not trade her position for the world.

The sky was cloudless and, before long, she felt that she had had too much sun and went back inside with a basket overflowing with flowers, leaving a trail of denuded rose bushes behind her.

The Dark Castle was cool and she sighed in relief at the way the air washed over her now that she was out of the sun. Setting the basket down on the table, she wandered over to where Rumplestiltskin was spinning on his low dais in the corner, the low whirring of the wheel drawing her closer even as it spun its magic .

She stood there watching over his shoulder for a moment before placing her hands on his shoulders — his heavy dragon skin coat left off due to the heat of the day — and leaned over to get a closer look at where, exactly, the straw turned to gold.

“Nyaaah-ha-ha-ha!” Rumplestilskin shouted as her jerked away, his chest stuck out in his haste to get away from her.  

“I-I’m sorry, Rumple,” she said, embarrassed from his reaction. “I didn’t mean to startle you..”

“You didn’t startle me, Dearie,” he said, turning to look at her with irritation. “Your hands,” he said, moving away from them when she held them up. “They’re _freezing_.”

Belle rolled her eyes at him, placing those same hands on her hips as she watched him stand up quickly and skirt around her lest she touch him again. Really, she thought, that was an overreaction of the worst sort. He left off his coat, but there was still two layers of clothing between them.  “My hands are always cold,” she told him. “And you’re being a baby.”

“Am not!” he protested, pointing at her with a black-nailed finger before curling it back in a fist next to his chest. “I don’t understand, it’s July and you spent all morning outside gathering roses. You should be toasty all over by now.”

She bit her lip and looked down at his boots to keep the smile from forming, but it was useless and she wound up with a sort of twisted smirk on her face as she looked back up at him. “ _All_ morning?”

“N-yes?” he said, realization that he’d been caught dawning in his eyes. Caught watching her that morning as she went about her “work”. Caught paying attention to her. “Never mind. I’ll get you a hot rock,” he said with a funny wrinkle to his nose and waving a hand dismissively, pretending he wasn’t flustered just as she was pretending she wasn’t amused.

“Well, you know what they say, Rumple,” she told him over her shoulder as she went back to her basket of flowers. “Cold hands, warm heart.”

She left him staring at her, humming another tune to herself as she went to find vases for her flowers.


	60. Dig

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: New neighbor Belle's dog keeps tunneling under the fence into Gold's yard.

Belle slapped a hand to her forehead when there was a sharp knock at her door and Bueller didn’t bark. The knocking itself was fine, but the silence definitely wasn’t because that meant the knocker was her neighbor, Mr. Gold, and Bueller had, once again, dug his way over to his yard.

She flipped her dish towel over her shoulder and hurried over to the door, an apology already on her lips, and, when she threw it open, sure enough, there was her dog snug in Mr. Gold’s free arm and shedding all over his designer jacket.

“Bueller!” she scolded, taking him from her obliging neighbor then set him down on the floor where he scrambled away with a quiet ‘tac tac tac tac’ of his nails. “You rotten beast!” she called after him before turning her attention to the man standing on her front porch. “I am so sorry. Did he get through in the usual spot?” she asked as she wiped her hands on towel.

His cheek twitched and he shook his head, good-naturedly. “No, he found a new place to dig today — a lot of fresh, loose dirt by the looks of him,” he said in that rumbly accent that sent her knees knocking. “No harm done, but you might want to look at it when you get the chance.”

She gave out a long, worn out sigh, shaking her head at her dog’s insistence of taking up residence in Mr. Gold’s backyard, then moved away to allow him inside if he wanted. “Do you want to come in for tea? It’s the least I can do since you’ve come all this way,” she added with a wry grin and a glance at his house, only yards away.

She smiled up at him until he joined her in the hall, his face sheepish and a bit red as he protested that it was unnecessary, but she led him to the kitchen anyway, chattering away at the first subject that came to her mind. Damage to the fence aside, her weekly encounters with her neighbor were always something she looked forward to and she always meant to invite him over without the excuse of having to return her shameless dog, but Bueller was always one step ahead of her and she’d since become too embarrassed to ask.

Their routine was simple. Bueller would dig his way over to Mr. Gold’s, Mr. Gold would then return the wayward pup to Belle, Belle would invite him in for tea while they troubleshot the situation, trying new deterrents every week. So far nothing worked.

Mr. Gold interested her a lot. When she first moved in, everyone told her to be wary of the man, that he would sue her faster than she could blink if she so much as stepped a toe on his property without his permission. So when she’d been in her new house for less than a week and found him at her door with her dog in his arms looking not even an ounce ashamed of himself, her stomach dropped to her feet. Mr. Gold looked fit to be tied at first and she thought she would have to hire a lawyer first thing in the morning, but he turned out to be very reasonable. He’d had a dog before and understood their need to dig. He showed her where the hole was and helped her fill it in with his own shovel while Bueller sniffed around their heels and got in the way. Their encounter was a lot more pleasant considering the fact that she absolutely was at fault and she baked him a plate of cookies as a way of saying thanks for not suing.

It was with dismay that he’d returned a month later, her unrepentant dog firmly tucked under his arm, and fresh hole dug under the fence. She’d since tried lining the fence with chicken wire, laying bricks bricks, and planting bushes, but nothing would keep Bueller strictly on her side of the fence and now it seemed he was over at Mr. Gold’s more often than he was at Belle’s. She may as well give Bueller to her neighbor, he’d probably let her have visitation.

“I just don’t understand,” Belle said as she poured his tea. “He’s never been this bad at our old house. he dug once in awhile, but nothing to this extent.” She sat down with a huff. “Are you sure I can’t pay for damages?”

He shook his head at her, blowing on his tea to cool it down before sipping. “There isn’t much damage to speak of. I expect all the dirt is on your side of the fence, not mine. And I like Bueller,” he added with a twinkle of his eyes, smiling down at him with fondness. “He’s a good dog.”

“Usually,” she amended before turning to dig through her pantry. “Well, this week, I have coconut macaroons or chocolate chip. Which do you prefer?”

He cleared his throat softly, looking up at her with a cryptic smile. “The, er, chocolate chip, please.”

An hour later and back in his own home, Gold whistled to himself as he fried up another package of bacon, making sure to get the strips nice and crispy so they would crumble easily. He’d have to pick another part of the fence to plant the bacon in, but he figured he’d see the front of Bueller’s snout within half an hour and then maybe he’d be invited to dinner.

* * *

 

_Dig 'verse: One day, Bueller's nowhere to be seen. Maybe even two days. Finally Gold gets concerned enough that he goes over to ask Belle where he is. Could be the opening to talk that allows a relationship to get started._

 

It had been two weeks without the sight of Bueller’s pointy snout poking out from underneath their shared fence and Gold was beginning to fret. Two weeks was unusual. Two weeks was worrying.

Gold didn’t understand it. He’d planted the bacon as usual, left a tempting pile of treats underneath the azaleas, and pried a board loose at the back end of the garden — just enough to make it easier should Bueller happen to pass by and happen to see it and happen to want to pay him, and his bacon, a visit and still the dog was nowhere in site.

It was time to pay a visit to Belle. Perhaps something had happened to the dog. He was sure he would have heard of it if Bueller was sick. Belle still greeted him as cheerfully as ever whenever she saw him and it didn’t seem as if she was worried about her pup… Still, it was best to check. Surely she wouldn’t think it strange that he popped over just to ask.

The crazy barking and tap-tap-tapping of nails on the floors was reassuring and he would have turned around and left if he hadn’t already knocked on the door and heard Belle’s sweet voice calling to her dog, then to the door, that they were a loud thing and she’ll be right there, respectively.

Her face brightened when she opened the door and saw him and Gold felt his chest swell at the sight, looking down to hide the blush he could feel creeping up his cheeks. Bueller was sniffing around the hem of his slacks, tail wagging enough to cause a mighty tempest for some ants and looked as healthy as he’d ever been.

“Mr. Gold! How are you?” Belle asked, breathlessly, as if she’d run to catch the door.

“I’m good,” he said, looking up, finally. “I, uh, was just wondering about Bueller. I haven’t seen him in a while.”

The smile on Belle’s face froze a moment before she answered back too-bright and forcefully. “Ah, yes. Well I got so tired of filling in holes that I bought him one of those invisible fence collars,” she told him with her nose wrinkled in distaste.

The thought that Belle had solved the fence problem entirely didn’t even occur to him and he felt the air whoosh out of him when he realized that their casual dinners and conversations were now at an end. He had no reason to visit her now, unless something happened like a an alien invasion or Christmas caroling, neither of which was ever likely to happen.

“It seems to have worked,” he said quietly, now feeling guilty that he’d earned the dog a shock collar. Poor dog. No wonder the bacon hadn’t worked.

“Oh, yeah, he’s really smart,” she agreed. “I mean, it just took him a few days before he learned, and I only put it on him when he needs to go outside…”

Gold nodded his head, absently, not really paying attention to what she was saying. He looked at Bueller who stared up at him with innocent eyes. He wished he had thought to bring a treat for him to apologize, but it would be difficult to explain to Belle why he had a stash of dog biscuits in his pocket.

He looked up when Belle fell silent and he realized that she had asked him a question and was waiting expectantly.

“I’m sorry, what was that,” he asked.

“Did you want to come in for something to drink?” she asked, her eyes widening as she bit her lip in a display that made him want to fall on top of her and beg forgiveness.

“Uh…” He looked over to his house and thought of all the treats in his backyard that he had to go dig up before Bueller decided to risk everything and come under the fence anyway. He should get rid of it. “I actually have some pressing business to take care of, but thank you just the same.” He glanced back at her, plastering a smile that felt as false as the lie he was about to tell her. “Oh and, just to let you know, I had Dove come out and line the fence on my side with some… block things. Big blocks,” he said, holding his hands out to demonstrate. “So, ah… Bueller can probably go without the collar on now.”

She tilted her head, staring at him before she nodded, disappointment inexplicably written on her features. “Thank you for letting me know, Mr. Gold,” she said, using her foot to gently scoot Bueller back before he got his nose caught in the door.

Gold made his way back to his house deep in thought. His first instinct was to go to the pound and get a dog and train it to go under the fence to Belle’s yard, but his allergies and latent common sense told him that was a bad idea. His second instinct was to get on the phone with Dove and have him line the fence with something so that his lie didn’t stay a lie for long.


	61. The Request

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fluff prompt: Bae announces that he would like a sibling ASAP. Belle finds this amusing. Gold contemplates finding a rock to crawl under. (Bonus points is Bae is already an adult and/or makes his request in front of other people)

“I’ve always wanted a baby sister.”

Rumplestiltskin spluttered into his mug sending a stream of tea down the front of his cloak. “W-what?” he coughed out, eyes watering and flitting around to see who might have heard his son’s declaration. The public room at the inn was crowded with travelers taking their rest before they moved on and several people had turned their heads at Bae’s sudden outburst. He patted at his front uselessly until he remembered he had magic and could just ‘poof’ it dry.

“Or a brother,” Bae added. “I’m not picky.”

Rumplestiltskin huddled over his cup, ducking his head in embarrassment and noting with disgust the way his skin glittered in the lamplight. “You realize it’s not possible to choose which you get, right?”

Bae shrugged, picking up his own cup of warmed chocolate and sipped at it experimentally. “I just thought it might be nice,” he said, completely unaware of his father’s discomfort.

“Um… Bae,” Rumplestiltskin began, shifting in his seat. “Look, that’s not— it’s not gonna happen, you understand that, don’t you?”

Bae shrugged again, this time a bit sullenly and Rumplestiltskin felt as if a dagger had pierced his heart knowing that he’d made his son sad even if there was nothing he could do about it. Bae was already sixteen and almost a man now. Soon he would want a family of his own and Rumplestiltskin would be left on his own. Sure Bae would let him visit, but it wouldn’t be the same thing. He was the Dark One he could have the world at his feet if he chose, but, now that the Ogre War was over and the rebuilding nearly complete, there wasn’t anything he wanted more than to settle down with a family and maybe some sheep and live happily ever after.

“I, uh, don’t know what to say,” he muttered. “You know it will be impossible to find anyone who could look past this.” He held up a hand, turning it until it caught the light.

A man at the next table gasped then turned away from him, holding a hand up to the side of his face lest the Dark One pay particular attention to him. Rumplestilskin pretended he didn’t notice. He was used to it by now.

“Never know,” Bae said, stubborn to the last.

Rumplestiltskin smiled to himself at his son’s optimism, then sighed to himself. There were several reasons why a baby sister — or brother — was out of the question and being the Dark One was at the top of the list. There was also the fact that he was still married to deal with. Milah had left them, yes, but he had no idea of her whereabouts or if she was even still alive. He could find out, but he was always afraid of what he would discover. Either she was alive and happy or, worse, dead after a miserable existence at the hands of a pirate crew. Either prospect ate at him and he never forgave himself for not trying to rescue her, but there was his son to think about. Sweet Bae with the eyes that almost looked like his — just enough to think that maybe he really was Bae’s father and not merely a stand in as he sometimes suspected.

He might not be Bae’s father by blood, but he was his father in deed and fact and a pesky little detail of questionable paternity didn’t stop Rumplestiltskin from loving his son with every fiber of his being. He would do anything for Bae.

Except this one tiny, little thing of providing a sibling. That he could not do.

He dug into a hidden pocket and flipped a silver coin on the table. More than enough to pay for their refreshments and the inconvenience of having the Dark One in their establishment. They had places to be. He’d promised Bae a tour of the neighboring kingdoms this summer and they were just starting out. He wanted it to be memorable for his son.

“Good day, gentlemen,” a softly accented voice spoke from behind his shoulder. “I’ve heard that you’re looking for a guide to Arendelle.”

Bae’s head shot up and a smile blossomed across his face. “Papa!’ he said, nudging at the Dark One with the toe of his boot. “Look!”

Rumplestiltskin turned around and came face to face with the bluest eyes he’d ever seen. The woman was compact and a bit dreamy-eyed, but she had a lovely expression that didn’t flinch when she got a better look at who her potential employer was. Her hair was gathered up in a hasty ponytail and she was dressed sensibly in deerskin trousers with a doublet pulled over a thick linen shirt, which he could just see peeking out over her… well, she was definitely female.

His eyes shot back up to her face where she was regarding him with curiosity. “We are,” he said, his tongue feeling thick in his mouth at the sight of her. “And who might you be?”

She smiled once more, her cheeks dimpling cheerfully. “I’m Belle.”

* * *

_TheRequest!Bae- Did you get the chance to meet Belle's friend, Mulan? I think your papa would like her; they are both very family-oriented._

****

The raucous laughter and the plinky strains of a stringed instrument that Mulan swore wasn’t out of tune, grew faint as Belle stomped further away from the pub. Well, it wasn’t a pub, not the way she knew them, but it was a watering hole that served various liquid forms of intoxication of varying degrees of strength and questionable legality and, while Belle didn’t regret coming to visit Mulan with her clients, she was very sorry to have agreed to the night out. To this… pub. Where Mulan was a hero and she was just the foreign girl with the strange face and the funny accent that _certain_ people felt needed to be corrected as if she was a child.

And while Belle normally didn’t mind the linguistic lessons, for some reason it just rubbed her the wrong way. All of it, the speech corrections, the impromptu calligraphy critiques, the side eyes she received from people she once considered her friends when she showed up in town with two men in tow, but no inclination to marry either of them.

She plopped down next to the well, staring down into the black hole feeling just as sloshy as the water inside it. It was that last part that made her storm out of the pub. The fact that Rumplestiltskin and young Bae were both having a good time should have been a matter of pride for her — especially after the disaster in Arendale with the rock trolls — but it just made her itchy and restless.

They had been on the road for months and held a certain fondness for the two of them that confused her some times. Bae was easy. He was open and eager and a naturally happy person so it felt natural to love him. He felt like a younger brother, the one her parents never had and Belle enjoyed her time with him above almost everything else.

It was Bae’s father that was becoming a problem.

Rumplestiltskin, the Dark One, was certainly enjoying himself, performing small feats of close magic and sleight of hand with all the dexterity of a conman and the joy of a boy still in short pants.  

Mulan had definitely been impressed, so much so that Belle suspected her of being blind drunk, but, for all of the warrior woman’s gruff exterior, there still lurked a woman who enjoyed a good show. And Rumplestiltskin was putting on quite the act.

They had taken to Mulan immediately. Bae sitting next to her, listening with rapt attention of her single-handed defeat of the Huns (a massive army only slightly less scary than ogres) and Rumplestiltskin seemed to enjoy her company above any others they had met during their journeys. Which was the point, of course. She was supposed to introduce them to interesting and wonderful people and Mulan certainly filled the bill in spades. If only she wasn’t quite so interesting, or beautiful, or brave, or wonderful. Or, if Belle wished to be truthful with herself, if only Rumplestiltskin hadn’t tried so much to impress her back.

Belle was bewildered and angry at herself for feeling so put out. She liked Rumplestiltskin and Bae well enough, she just didn’t mean to… _like_ them any more than she should. They would be parting ways eventually and it wouldn’t do to get too attached. Why did it matter that Rumplestiltskin liked her friend? That was a good thing, wasn’t it?

A small voice inside her told her that like wasn’t a strong enough word for what she’d begun to feel for her employer and the truth of it frightened her more than ogres, more than a yaoguai, more than the Dark One’s varied moods.

“There you are,” a high-pitched voice trilled out from the dark.

Belle stiffened at the sound of it, even as a thrill ran down her spine. “Hey,” she said, with a brightness that felt false even to her own ears. “You just missed the moonrise.” She turned around to gaze up at him, her eyes searching for any signs of displeasure. It was her job to keep him happy. If he wasn’t entertained enough at the village, then they would move on to another place in the morning.

“Have I?” He was glancing doubtfully at the sliver of moon hovering over the treeline, warily regarding it before he turned his full attention to her, his strange eyes glittering from the strong drink he’d partaken earlier. “Shame,” he murmured before sitting down on the lip of the well opposite her.

Belle made a noncommittal noise, placing her hands in her lap before slumping a bit with a weariness she didn’t often feel.

“You disappeared,” he said softly.

She glanced up at him, surprised. “Did I? I only needed a bit of fresh air, it was growing too close in there.” She smiled at him tightly.

“Yes, we seem to have drawn quite the crowd.”

She smiled for real, then, just a tiny thing that slipped past her before she realized. “Well, we should be used to that by now,” she said, reminding him of the other places they’d visited where their tiny group had earned the scrutiny of a vast amount of disapproving people. From Belle’s unmarried status to Rumplestiltskin’s… unfortunate skin affliction, they found hostility everywhere they roamed. Mulan’s village was, so far, the most accepting place they’d toured. Of course, they were used to Belle for the most part.

“I, uh, I’ve enjoyed meeting your friend,” he said after a long silence. “Mulan is… interesting.”

A twist in her gut had her holding onto her stomach with a shaky hand. “I— yes, she is. Very interesting,” she agreed, the smile wiped clean off her face.

Another excruciating moment of thick silence between them before Belle remembered that she was hired to engage her guests in conversation. “You certainly had them on their toes in there. Does the Dark One often engage in close magic?” She knew the answer was a resounding no because he had never sought to be as affable before now. Not in Arendale, not in Agrabah, not in the many wayside inns they’d stopped at along the way. Just here.

He looked at her, abashed. “No. Actually… I learned it from my father.”

Belle’s mouth fell open as she stared at him. “Y-your father?”  she asked, incredulously, blinking to herself. It hadn’t occurred to her that he had a father. Tales of the Dark One had been around for longer than anyone she knew had been alive. She wondered, not for the first time just how old the man was, but politeness and a sliver of self-preservation prevented her from asking outright.

He must have known what she was thinking because he smiled slyly at her, twisting his fingers in a manner that made her eyes water until a rose appeared between his thumb and forefinger.

She bit her lip, trying not to smile, but she felt her cheeks betraying her again

“I may not have been as… friendly as I could have been before,” he said slowly, twirling the rose a bit. “But, you said that you were known here and that Mulan was a friend…” he offered her the rose with a contrite look. “Thought I’d make an effort.”

She gaped at him before looking at the rose. It was perfectly formed and the scent of it filled the air with a soft perfume that she could nearly see in the magical moonlight. She opened her mouth to say something, but the twisting in her gut had luckily transformed into butterflies and they were currently rendering her incapable of speech. That he’s been making an effort for her sake hadn’t even occurred to her. That he’d cared enough to want to make a good impression sent those butterflies into a swirling tornado that both tickled her and made her nervous. She wanted to laugh in relief, but the earnest way he looked at her stopped it in her throat before it could bubble up and destroy his confidence.

“You haven’t been awful,” she told him, delicately taking the flower from his fingers and holding it to her nose. “I’ve rather enjoyed your company,” she told him, her cheeks coloring almost as red as the rose.

He clapped his hands together, rubbing his fingers against each other in a way Belle had learned to recognize when he was feeling particularly uncomfortable.

“Thank you for the flower,” she told him, placing her hand on his to still his fingers. His skin was a bit bumpy, but warm and pleasing and she squeezed his hand in hers, reassuringly.

He stared at their entwined fingers, before he glanced up at her, a look of wonderment on his face. “It’s no matter,” he whispered, taking his hand back and folding his fingers into his cupped palm. “No matter,” he repeated, looking away at the sliver of moon above them.

* * *

_TheRequest!Bae- Where are you all heading next after your stay with Mulan?_

“Let’s see,” Belle said as she consulted a small map in her hands. “We can travel towards the Elephant Kingdom to the east or, if you’d rather, we can visit the Dwarf mines for a day or two. I have a friend—”

“Er… not too keen on Dwarfs,” Bae said, eyeing his father warily. “Well, more the fairies that hang out around the mines.”

Belle looked up at him in surprise, blinking owlishly at him, then hastily rolled the map up in her hands before stuffing it back into its bamboo case. “O-kay. Well, that leaves the Elephant Kingdom then,” she said brightly. “Did you want to travel by horse or carpet?”

Rumplestiltskin spoke then, hesitant and shy before he straightened his shoulders and blurted out, “Actually, I was wondering… how would you like to visit the Dark Castle?”

Belle’s mouth hung open before she caught herself and shut it with a snap. “The Dark Castle,” she said, excitedly. “That would be incredible. I don’t know anyone who’s been before!”

“This doesn’t mean it’s to be a regular stop on your tours,” he said, poking a black-tipped nail at her. “But, you’re welcome to stay with us. For a bit.” He curled his finger back in when he realized that he’d touched her chest, his gold-green skin turning a faint bronze.

“How long is a bit?” she asked, pretending not to notice his blush.

He shrugged noncommittally. All his attention was on his gloves as he adjusted the cuffs over his sleeves, but his eyes flitted to her face with a brightness that made her breath catch in her throat.

“S’long as you want,” he said, finally.

Belle bit her lip in thought considering her options. Rumplestiltskin had just effectively cut their trip short and she had nothing waiting for her. Finding work was as a woman in this land was difficult enough and her only alternative would be to slink back home to her father and the threat of an arranged marriage. Rumplestiltskin had been her first paying customer in weeks and the first one in a long time who hadn’t expected any sort of unagreed upon affections once she was out of earshot of the inn. Ironically, after spending weeks on the road with him and his son, she felt that she wouldn’t mind indulging in some unagreed upon affections with the mysterious sorcerer. She'd learned to care greatly for him and for his son and the prospect of spending more time with them appealed to her.

And, it was true what she’d said, she'd never heard of anyone who had visited the Dark Castle by invitation. Visited with the purpose of gaining his services, yes, but as a guest? The opportunity to get to know Rumplestiltskin and Bae in their home was too good an adventure to pass up.

She smiled up at him, taking his hand and pressing it between hers. “I’d love to!”

“Y-you would,” he asked, incredulously, his eyes alternately glancing from her hands touching him to her face, looking for some hidden lie.

“Well, for a bit,” she added with a cheeky smile.

* * *

_Did Rumple and Bae give you a tour of the Dark Castle when you arrived?_

 

Belle tripped after Rumplestiltskin trying to take in everything at once, but it was proving impossible. Everywhere she looked there were trophies and _things_ placed on any surface that stood still. Some of them were frightening like the wooden puppets and a large scythe placed in a corner looking ready to chop someone’s hand off. The rest of it looked innocent enough, but Belle was beginning to remember the stories of Rumplestiltskin’s deals and a thrill of trepidation ran along her spine as she saw clear evidence of their truth.

She may have grown complacent during her tenure as Rumplestiltskin’s guide. She may have made a mistake in coming. Belle hoped she did the right thing in accepting his invitation, earnestly given and gladly accepted.

There was a spinning wheel in the corner of one dark room and Belle craned her neck to get a better look at it, but she was whisked through too quickly to see more than a pile of straw in a basket on one side and a long rope of gold coming out of it on the other. It glittered in the low firelight and she marveled at it. Despite having seen Rumplestiltskin perform magic along their travels, she had forgotten all about his reputation as a spinner of gold until now. She swallowed heavily, firmly tamping down any feelings of misgiving that wanted to burst forth. Bae, at least, would not lead her astray even if his father was the Dark One. She was sure of it. mostly.

Rumplestiltskin set a brisk pace, strutting just ahead of her in a manner that spoke of his being Lord of the Manor and Make no Mistake About It. Bae had run off the moment they stepped inside the imposing castle, disappearing down a hallway before she knew what was happening, leaving his father to guide her to her quarters. She was glad to be indoors after so many weeks of travel and she wished for a hot bath and a hot meal followed by a good night’s rest in a feather bed. She wondered what Rumplestiltskin might want in trade for those luxuries and if she had anything with which to entice him to make a deal.

They turned corner after corner and climbed stairs whose treads were worn down in the center after centuries of use. They passed through anterooms where the doors opened before them as if not even the wood and iron could resist the storm that was Rumplestiltskin until, at last, at the end of a long corridor, Rumplestiltskin stopped abruptly in front of a large door carved in an intricate design that would have intrigued her had she been less tired and more alert.

She brushed back a lock of hair with the back of her hand, looking up at his interesting face. She’d quickly learned to like his face despite his exotic coloring and the strangeness of his eyes and, after weeks of familiarity, she thought him quite handsome. However, now that they had stopped, she could see that he was nervous, his tongue flicking out to lick at dry lips while his eyes searched her face for a sign… of what Belle didn’t know, but after a moment he blinked and looked away.

“What’s this,” she asked, feeling quite breathless after their long trek and she only hoped that she would be able to find her way back to the long, polished table that they passed in one room and where she assumed breakfast would be served unless there was another room in which they dined that she didn’t yet know about. She assumed Rumplestiltskin would inform her of its location if that was the case.

He gave a jittery laugh, a hand coming up to fiddle with the lace that swathed his neck before he twirled it around in the air in a gesture she hadn’t seen in weeks. “Let’s just call this… your room,” he told her, his voice deepening into a throaty purr that reverberated through her bones. His lips gave a nervous smile as he watched her.

“My-my room?” she asked, leaning forward. He was so close. If she stood up on her tiptoes and tilted her head just she would be able to brush her lips against the stubble of his cheek. 

He stood back, allowing Belle to open the door for herself, perhaps to give her ownership of the room, perhaps better to stand back and watch her face she she caught a glimpse of it for the first time.  

Belle stepped through the doorway, gasping as the candles flickered to life once she passed the threshold. The room lit up brilliantly as if from a thousand candles even though only a few sconces were in evidence as well as a great fire blazing away along one side.  The candles were a neat trick, but Belle’s attention was riveted to the walls where there were rows and rows of bookshelves lined up, each overflowing with leather-bound books and even a few scrolls stuffed here and there where there was room.

The mullioned windows reached from the floor to the ceiling, letting in the moonlight and giving a view of an inky black lake in the distance with the mountains behind. In the center of the room, placed on a colorful carpet, were large, squashy chairs for lounging and, up near a wide bank of windows where the light was best, was a delicate writing desk. It was a beautiful room, homey despite its size, and Belle stared at it open-mouthed until her brain caught up with her eyes.

It was a library, she realized with a shiver. A library in which she was expected to sleep.  

“I don’t understand,” she whispered, turning towards her host. “ _This_ is my room?”

Rumplestiltskin hovered at the doorway, not daring to step one foot inside the room with her. He cleared his throat. “Yes. Well, it’s part of it,” he explained pointing towards the fire and a doorway that went unnoticed in her haste to examine her new quarters.

And no wonder as it had been hidden behind a bookcase that now swung open at a wave of Rumplestiltskin’s hand. “There’s a bed behind this door and a-a bathroom for any, uh, personal needs.” He dropped his hand letting it flop against his breeches with a slap. “Just pull the third book on left on the fourth shelf and you’re in.”

She looked at him, eying him carefully. “You knew I love books?” she asked, wonderingly. She didn’t think he’d been paying attention.

He shrugged, sniffing loudly and pretending indifference as he fiddled with his cuffs. “Anyone with ears would know you love books,” he retorted, with a quirk of his lips. “And I’ve been around you long enough to figure it out even if you hadn’t been prattling on about them for weeks on end.” He glanced up at her, nervously then backed away further into the hall. “Lights’ll lower if you ask them to. They get, uh, enthusiastic.”

“Enthusiastic,” she repeated, biting her lip to keep from smiling — a battle she was quickly losing. “The lights?” She watched as he nearly bumped into the wall, stopping only just before his shoulders hit the plaster.

“Well, we’ve been away a long time and I… that is, we don’t get a lot of visitors,” he explained, clapping his hands together in front of his pants, drawing her eyes down. “They’ll calm down in a bit.”

“ I see,” she said with some distraction. “And, where will you be?”

He startled then and Belle realized that she’d been staring at places she had no business to. “Hm? What?” he stuttered, his eyebrows raised until they disappeared into his curly hair.

“If I need to find you,” she clarified, her eyes softening at his discomfort.

His face cleared as he gave a small sigh of relief. “No need for that. The castle will give you all that you need. We could go for days without seeing each other if we wanted,” he added as an afterthought.

She wrinkled her nose at that. “That doesn’t sound like much fun.”

Rumplestiltskin blinked, confused. “It doesn’t?”

“No. What’s the point of visiting if you don’t… visit?” she asked, stepping towards him, her head tilted to the side as she studied him.

He glanced towards the stairs and Belle wondered if he was going to run off if she pressed him further.

He cleared his throat. “Yes. Yes, I see your point,” he began before he straightened up. “I’ll see you in the morning then,” he said.

“Goodnight, Rumplestiltskin,” she said, softly, putting her hand on the door.

He gave he a wavering smile. “Goodnight.”

She closed the door a few inches, watching him watch her. “Goodnight,” she repeated,  desperately trying to keep the giggle that wanted to bust out, _in_.

“Goodnight.”

He didn’t move and Belle lost the war with the giggle, calling out another ‘goodnight’ as she gently closed the door. She didn’t understand. Why invite her at all if it made him so uncomfortable? “Silly man,” she whispered to herself as she leaned back against it, shaking her head at his antics.

“I heard that!”

* * *

_How was Belle's first night at the castle? She didn't get lost and end up in the wrong room or anything did she? Dark Castles are very tricky to naviga_ te after all...

 

Belle stood in the open doorway, unsure and wary of her surroundings. She thought the door led to the bathing room. She had sworn when she peeked earlier, that there had been a large copper tub and a bowl on a stand and another small alcove fitted with a chamber pot off to the side. She dearly needed that alcove now.

She looked around the room she found herself in keeping her hand firmly on the door just in case she was whisked away to who-knows-where. There was a crackling fire behind a blackened grate topped off with a heavy mantle upon which was a drop spindle filled with golden thread spilling over the edge. A single wingback chair placed just to the left of the fireplace with a white fluffy rug made from the skin of an animal Belle didn’t know the name of. It might be a bear, given the shape of the head, but she’d never heard of a white bear before. A small table sat next to the chair upon which was an open book and a clunky handmade mug that held something that smelled delicious.

The room was cozy, but filled with luxurious textiles and furnishings. A large four-poster bed hung with golden curtains that looked suspiciously like silk and the bed was piled high with dark, velvety soft coverings. Belle stared at them in awe, wishing just for a moment that she could jump into the middle of it before quietly backing away to her own room. She’d clearly found herself in Rumplestiltskin’s apartments and as much as she enjoyed his company on the road, she doubted he would enjoy her presence in his rooms. She knew _she_ would be annoyed to find someone suddenly pop in uninvited.

Too late, Rumplestiltskin emerged from a hidden door on the right from what Belle assumed was his own bathing suite. His hair was damp from his bath and he was wrapped up in a long, soft looking robe that came to his calves, exposing his legs all the way down to his bare feet. Belle immediately averted her eyes, but it was too late, she’d already seen that the strange golden green scales went all the way down as she suspected.

“W-What are you doing here?” Rumplestiltskin said with a start, clutching at his robe.

“I don’t know. I was looking for the, uh, the chamber,” she said with a blush. She didn’t know why she felt embarrassed at her confession, she’d traveled rough with the man for weeks and had thought nothing of going behind a bush with him and Bae close by. Perhaps it was the intimate setting. She was in _his_ room and he was barefoot, barely dressed and awkward and… adorable?

He held a hand up reflexively, rubbing his fingers together in a gesture she’d seen him use before when he became uneasy. She wanted to take it in her own two hands and hold those fingers still.

“But your room is in the south wing. This is the west, the mountains shelter this side of the castle,” he said, his voice raising to a level she didn’t know a man could reach.

At her confused look he clarified. “More sun on that side,” he mumbled.

“Don’t care for the sun?” she asked with a soft smile.

“More like the sun doesn’t care for me,” he said, looking away, abashed. “The castle can be stubborn sometimes. Just turn around and you should be back in your room.”

Her eyes widened. “ _Should_?” she asked, skeptically.

“Well, it’s been known to be tricky,” he explained, glancing at her with a hint of a cheeky smile.

Belle nodded her head at that and bade him goodnight before she backed away.She turned around as she closed the door behind her, and gasped as she came face to face with Rumplestiltskin again, still in his room, still in his robe and still just as confused.

“It seems the castle chose to be stubborn,” she said as he stared at her in dismay.

“Indeed!” was all he said as he strode past her, like a rooster, opening the door behind her and all but shoving her back out. “Maybe it just needs me to do it,” he said, as he shooed her away.

It was useless, Belle found herself bouncing off of Rumplestiltksin’s chest as she went through the doorway. He spluttered at the contact, but she wasn’t paying attention to him, she was looking over her shoulder at her own room just on the other side.

He moved her over, absently studying the door. “Maybe I should just go through?” he mused and did just that, emerging from it as if he’d always been on the other side.

Belle’s eyes crossed and her brain tried to make sense of it. She saw him walk through, but the world shifted just as he passed the doorjamb so that he was walking towards her even as he walked away. It made no sense at all.

“Hmmm,” he said, a finger placed on his lips in thought before he looked at her with some mischief. “I think magic will do,” he said giving her no warning before he lifted his hand, engulfing her in purple smoke that clogged her lungs. Her body gave a lurch as she felt a pull near her belly button, a glimpse of her own apartments flit past her vision for a split second before she was transported straight back to the the very spot she had been standing in.

His eyes narrowed suspiciously. “No? Then perhaps I shall go.” He waved his hand again sending another burst of smoke out, but he, too, hadn’t moved.

Now, clearly annoyed at his inefficiency, he tried sending her to the great hall, to the kitchens, and to the pond in turn, but each time she found herself back in his room.

“Okay, okay just _stop_ ,” Belle said, waving the purple smoke from her eyes. It had filled the room from floor to rafter and it was beginning to sting her eyes. “Just…. Stop for a moment, please.” She wiped at her eyes until the smoke dissipated as quickly as it appeared, revealing an apprehensive Rumplestiltskin standing before her.

He lowered his hand to his side, a sheepish look on his face, with a meek, “sorry.”

“Well, it seems we’re stuck for the moment,” she said, placing her hands on her hips as she turned around to study the room closer.

“Hmmm, yes,” he mused, glaring at the room. “I could always jump out the window,” he offered with a sly look.

She snorted. “You’d probably land right on top of me,” she retorted then snapped her mouth shut. “Um, I, uh, I still need to use the facilities…” She wiggled her knees a bit.

He jolted, suddenly aware of her discomfort, “Yes, yes! Through that door, make yourself, uh, comfortable.”

“Thank you,” Belle called out as she ran past him in her haste to relieve her bladder.

They could sort out the sleeping situation after.

* * *

_Was the sleeping situation any more successful than the bathroom situation? Also did Bae laugh when he realized the Castle had trapped you and Belle together?_  

 

Rumple stood by the wardrobe, one bare foot on top of the other as if trying to hide it from sight. He coughed, turning a deeper shade of bronze while Belle fluffed the pillows.

“This isn’t necessary, I can sleep very well on the couch,” he said, his voice a pitch of nervous petulence that made her bite her lips to hold back a smile.

“The bed is large enough for ten,” she admonished. “And we slept closer than this when we were in stuck in that freak storm in the mountains of Enchancia. We all had to huddle for warmth. You, me, Bae, and the horse.”

He gave her a wavering smile but it fell almost immediately. “Hnnnn-yes, but…”

“But?”

“But Bae and the horse aren’t here,” he finished, quietly.

“Are you afraid for your virtue?” she asked.

He shook his head rapidly, his curls swinging wildly about his face.

“Are you afraid for my virtue then,” she said, trying to ignore the upswing of butterflies that had taken flight in her belly. She felt breathless at the thought of Rumplestiltskin taking a few liberties with her only to feel a shock of disappointment when he shook his head again. It settled somewhere at the base of her throat and made the smile on her face difficult to keep up.

“No, you’re perfectly safe from me, I promise you.” He looked down at his feet, then, his toes trying to tuck themselves into each other, which proved to be impossible.

“Well, then,” she said in a dangerously brittle voice. “We have nothing to worry about do we?”

* * *

_Did the castle let you guys out of your room for breakfast or are you trapped there still?_

Belle woke up gently, the soft mattress underneath her felt like it was stuffed with clouds and smelled a bit like the damp forest floor under foot and a bit like magic. She was comfortable and the thought of getting up didn’t appeal to her in the least. She kept her eyes closed, basking in the warmth and comfort and the feeling of _rightness_ that overwhelmed her senses, too insistent to try to talk herself into getting up at the moment. The morning can wait.

The bed shifted next to her as a quiet sough of warm air ghosted against her ear. She turned her head to find herself face to face with Rumplestiltskin, who had just woken up himself and was staring at her as if he was still dreaming.

He had that slow, sleepy look and, in that unguarded moment, he smiled softly at her, the skin around his strange eyes crinkling up and, for once, he didn’t seem self-conscious of his blackened teeth, letting them peek out from between his lips as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

That feeling of rightness filled her, almost to an unbearable level and there was no ignoring it now.

Belle blinked at him, lifting her hand to push a curling lock of hair from his forehead, gently settling it along his head and letting her hand come back down to cup his cheek.

“What’s happening,” he whispered, his voice cracking in his just-woken haze.

“Something perfect,” she told him, as she pulled him in for a kiss.

* * *

  _Now that Belle's decided to stay for a bit, what has she been doing around the castle? Reading? Exploring? Do you join her?_

 

Belle reached up and carefully took the sword from its holder, a delighted grin on her face as she turned towards him at his place seated on top of the large table in his great hall.

“And what about this one,” she asked, holding it flat on the palms of her hands., stopping when her dress just skimmed his knees.

He took it from her, careful not to nick her skin with its sharp edges. “Ahh, this sword is special. A man named Alexander made a deal with me for it. He used it to solve an impossible riddle,” he tittered with a wag of his head.

She tilted her head to the side, running a finger over the steel critically. “I used a sword to solve a riddle once.”

Rumple watched her closely, intrigued. “Had you now?”

“Mmm. There was a beast,” she told him, never taking her eyes off the sword in her friend’s hands. “Only he wasn’t a beast; he was a man cursed.”

“And what did you do?” he whispered hoarsely.

She looked up at him, her eyes bluer than the summer sky. “I broke the curse and freed him.”

He could feel his heart begin to squeeze painfully in his chest. A flare of something, of hope and desire and trepidation all wrapped up into fiery fingers that grabbed at him and made him wish for more.

“H-how did you do that?” he asked, afraid of the answer. Only True Love’s kiss was a guaranteed way to break a curse, though there were other means to do it.

She stared at him, her mouth open to speak, but no words came out. She was so close. Close enough to kiss if he wanted and Rumple knew she wouldn’t object. Would welcome his advances during the daytime as she had in the dark hours of night. He glanced at her lips, plump and pink and waiting, before flicking his eyes back to hers again.

“I, uh… He was on fire. A beast of flames,” she said, her breath ghosting over his lips in a whisper of a kiss. “I was meant to kill him. To save a village from him, but I didn’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because he was hurting. I took my sword and used it to smash the village’s waterworks, dousing the flames.”

“And then what happened?”

“Fairy dust.”

He pulled back from her, disquieted. “That stuff isn’t as beneficial as you might think,” he told her, his voice nasty with his disgust.

She shook her head, confused as his sudden mood change. “I got it from a friend. And it turned him back into a man,” she said, trying to get him to look at her. “An ordinary man.”

He snorted at that, hiding his face from her. “Being an ordinary man isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be.”

She sat there expectantly, waiting for more, but he stayed stubbornly silent, grasping the sword with his fists. His skin was protected against its blade, but he felt the sting of it still. There would be red creases in his scaled flesh once he let go.

She sighed heavily and moved away, her skirt sliding against his leather in a manner most distracting. “I can see I hit a sore spot, Rumple. I’m sorry,” she said as she moved to close the doors to his display cabinet.

He watched her as she moved, her grace and beauty making it nearly impossible for him to breath.

“There’s more than one way to break a curse,” he called after her when she reached the doorway, her small hand perched on the door handle.

She looked over her shoulder at him, her eyes shining brightly. “I would like to hear about them someday, Rumple,” she told him before she turned and left the room.


	62. The Package

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two versions based on a post I can't find anymore. :\

i.

Mr. Gold strode across the street, cane in hand and  just as the UPS truck pulled away, swerving around his unflinching body and driving off towards City Hall. Gold, barely even registering the vehicle, reached the sidewalk and stepped up, taking care of his ankle on the icy surface.

He paused before opening the library doors, wondering if paying a visit for the fourth time that week was overkill. He didn’t even have a good excuse nor could he think of one, but he felt sure the librarian would be kind enough not to mention it. She was very kind. Very sweet. Very… If he had been anyone else — someone younger, someone handsome, someone worthy — he’d said that his visits were a way of courting her. But he wasn’t any one of those things. He was Mr. Gold, hated, scorned, and despised and the library was public property and he took advantage of it at reasonable intervals throughout the week. He never encroached on her when she was off duty, but if she was working, well, then, he might take up ten minutes of her time without feeling too guilty about it.

Sure enough, when he walked in, she greeted him with a smile so bright that it left him breathless.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Gold,” she said, her eyes shining at him over the desk and the small package that was placed on it. “I was wondering if I would see you today.”

“Were you?” he said, feeling a smile try to emerge. “And is there anything in particular you needed from me?” That was a loaded question and if he was speaking to anyone else, he would never have said it. But this was Belle French and she could ask him to crawl on broken glass down Main Street and he would probably comply. Probably.

She bit her lip and shook her head at him, her hair bouncing in a riot of curls that poorly hid a slight blush covering her cheeks. “No. Just wondering.”

She turned her attention to the package on her desk. It was too small to be a book order, which meant it was a personal delivery and she was probably waiting for him to leave so she could open it in private, but then, just as he was about to say goodbye (and then would be his long wait to see her again the next day) she took the scissors and cut through the tape.

“Sorry, I’ve been expecting this blouse for a while now and I’m a little anxious about the fit,” she said, glancing at him quickly. “I, um, plan on wearing it tomorrow.”

He didn’t know why she felt she had to apologize or explain, he was in her space after all, but he just nodded at her, hoping she’d continue. He loved the blouses she wore. They were delicate and feminine and he’d always wanted to touch her in one. To feel the silky fabric play against her soft skin was a particular fantasy of his and to be the first person to see a new one, even if it was in a box, made him ridiculously happy.

Belle parted the cardboard and lifted the protective paper off then frowned. She pulled out the blouse and held it up, but to Gold, it didn’t look like her normal attire. At first he didn’t register what it was because hanging there without the shape of a body underneath it, it hung limply and tangled up. But then his brain caught up with his eyes and then he realized that the bit of fake leather and metal was a nice bit of fetish wear.

“New dress code?” he asked hoarsely. He couldn’t look away from the thing in her hands. There was a leash hanging off the o-ring which was attaching the collar to a strap which was attached to more straps that, if it was actually on a human being, would cover absolutely nothing.    
“I… didn’t order this.” Belle said, finally, her embarrassment painfully obvious.

“No, of course not,” he said, agreeing with her readily although, he really wished she had, in fact, ordered that very thing she was holding up, but he didn’t want to make her any more uncomfortable than she already was. He should probably leave so she could recover herself, but he didn’t want her to think that he was shunning her for her

She fished into the box and pulled out the packing slip, eyes scanning it anxiously. “I have no idea why I received this, Mr. Gold. I have to return it immediately.”

Yes. It was wrong of the company to send the wrong item to her and they needed to rectify it immediately and he opened his mouth to tell her that, but instead what came out was, “Seems a shame.”

“What?” she whispered.

Gold looked back, terrified. “I… I mean. It’s a shame that they wasted your time like this. They should be more professional.” He winced at his poor attempt at fixing his gaff, but she just stared at him and the longer she stared the more scared he became. Would she merely scream at him or would she call the police for harassment? He wouldn’t blame her in either case.

He didn’t know what she was looking for, but she smiled at him shyly. “You think I should keep it then?”

“Gods, yes!”

It wasn’t until he saw her eyes widen that he realized he’d said it outloud. “I’m sorry. Of course I meant, no, it should be returned at once along with a strongly worded letter. Did you- did you want to sue?” he babbled, trying to recover, but there was no coming back from this. She would get a restraining order against him at once.

Belle licked her lips, thinking to herself as she watched his face then she smiled again, this time she did it in a way that sent a bolt of fire straight to his already hardening cock. “And if I keep it, Mr. Gold?”

Was she suggesting…

“Would you help me take it off?” she asked, leaning over her desk, giving him an eyeful of beautiful skin and the swell of her breasts.

“It would be my honor,” he said, truthfully.

“Good. Then I’ll stick with my original plan and wear it tomorrow.”

 

* * *

ii.

The UPS man left the building with a jingle leaving Gold to sort through his delivery alone, except he wasn’t alone, because sweet Belle French came in while the door was swinging shut and giving him a beautiful smile.   
“Afternoon, Mr. Gold,” she said, pleasantly. “It seems you have your hands full today.”

Anyone else would have gotten a snarky reply, but Gold had been harboring a not so secret crush on her for months and he enjoyed the little time she spent with him in his shop.

“Just a few supplies,” he said, quickly opening a small package with a box cutter. “Cleaning cloths, some special silver polish that I use for the…” He pulled out an assortment of pleather straps and held it up, wondering what it could be. “What is this?” he said.

Belle grinned up at him. “That doesn’t look like cleaning supplies,” she told him. “Unless you dress down for it.”

“Dress down?” he asked before he realized what it was he was holding. “Oh. Oh! There must have been some mistake.”

“Obviously,” Belle said, watching as he then pulled out a leash, his eyes wide and face aflame with embarrassment.

“Well, that just completes the ensemble then doesn’t it?” he said, trying to make a joke out of it. He felt humiliated, but he couldn’t bring himself to snap back at her. She was laughing, but it wasn’t really at him, and it felt a bit infectious. He chuckled nervously, stuffing the items back into the box. He’d return them immediately

“I think you should try it on.”

“What?”

She took the leash, examining the clasp with a professional eye before looking at him. “Put it on,” she said firmly, her voice not leaving any room for doubt.

He swallowed, audibly. “I don’t—”

She came over and ran the pleather handle of the leash underneath his chin, rasping it against the stubble that had grown there over the day. He swallowed, audibly as she stood on her tiptoes, bringing her mouth close enough that he could feel her warm breath wash over his face. if he leaned down just a fraction of an inch, he would be able to kiss her, but something in the way she stared at him told him that she would bring the strap down on him if he dared do it without her permission.

It was tempting.

“Put it on?” he whispered and when she nodded he lowered his eyes to the strips of pleather in his hand. “Now?”

The corner of her lip twitched as she suppressed a smile. “Yes,” she told him, her voice low and huskier than he’d ever heard it before. “Now.”

Her eyes were blue, he knew that, but right now they were blown nearly black and Gold wanted nothing more in life than to do exactly what she said.

He nodded his head slowly getting a smile in reward. “I’ll be right out.”

She hopped up onto his counter, giving him a good view of her legs and a tiny peek underneath her skirt. “I’ll be right here,” she told him. “Be a good boy.”


	63. Comes In, Comes On

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> From [this](http://desperatemurph.tumblr.com/post/144455897145/comes-in-comes-out) gifset on Tumblr and the inadvertently porny caption that I took way out of context because I do that sort of thing. It’s not particularly done well, but it’s done and that’s what counts right now.
> 
> Rated NC-17

**Comes In**

Belle wrapped her legs tighter around him, shifting and wiggling around him until he was on his knees firmly seated within the cradle of her thighs. Their enthusiastic lovemaking had moved them up until Belle’s head was knocking against the headboard. Nothing painful, but enough to take the enjoyment away momentarily.

She lifted her hands to the headboard, pressing them flat against the smooth wood to keep the weight of his body from pushing her head up against it as he fucked her. She arched, holding all her weight onto her upper back and shoulders as she urged him on with her feet digging into his ass, shoving him into her even as she used her arms to push herself back onto him. It wasn’t a position she would be able to hold for long, but Gold was quickly losing control of his own release as he grabbed her by the waist and slammed into her again and again. Her body was glistening with sweat in the low light and her muscles strained underneath her taut skin as she moved her hips in time with his. He knew he wasn’t going to last much longer, but he had to give her one more orgasm before he finished.

He reached down to find her engorged clit, the rough pad of his thumb barely settling on it, letting the rough and unsteady thrusts do all the work, but it was just enough to send Belle over the edge in a shrill cry that left her inner muscles clenching around his cock, triggering his own shuddering peak. He rose up on his knees, holding her against him as he bucked into her, his powerful thrusts subsiding as he emptied himself inside her.

Exhausted and spent, he let go of her waist then collapsed against her side, falling like a log.

“Timber,” he rasped, barely able to move his lips as he gasped for breath.

Belle giggled even as she reached for him, holding him against her body as he kissed at her neck, nuzzling against her until they both fell into an exhausted sleep.

* * *

**Comes On**

Gold was on his knees between Belle’s thighs again, but this time he wasn’t allowed to enter her. Her legs were spread wide in front of him with her feet on either side of the bed — and hadn’t it been a miraculous day when he learned that she could do that? One dainty hand was knuckle deep inside her glorious cunt and the other was working at her clit. She was gasping as she worked, her eyes never leaving his face as he urged her forward with filthy words.

Every so often her eyes would flick down to his cock and his own hand pumping at a languid pace, her mouth hung open uttering a low whine as she watched him. An adjustment in position as she lifted a knee to her chest, another finger inserted inside her, and her clit captured between two fingers before she was screaming. She writhed as she came as if she was trying to get away from her own orgasm, but she didn’t let up until she’d ridden it out, her cries coming out in ragged gasps that burned at her throat.

Slowly, she took her fingers out of her pussy, spreading her fingers wide to show him the coating of slick liquid then lifted it for him. He leaned forward, propping himself up with one hand and, with a heartfelt “Thank you” he began sucking at her fingers until they were cleaned of her essence.

He pumped himself furiously as he sucked, his hips bucking and his ass clenching as his orgasm neared. Belle encouraged him on, her own filthy words echoing his in a litany of obscenity that would have shocked the sheep-like citizens of their town.

He came with a hoarse shout, long ropes of thick semen falling onto her already slick with sweat skin. He drew it out, covering the top of her slick pussy, her stomach, her breasts, and her slender throat. Panting and slightly dizzy, he sat back on this heels, his hands on her knees to keep himself upright as he awaited her instructions.

Belle ran a finger through one thin rivulet that fell against her neck, sticking it into her mouth and sucking it clean with a smirk. Then she curled her finger, coaxing him forward.

“Time to clean it up,” she told him, pushing his head down to her waiting cunt.


	64. Shutterbug

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt i asked you to be my model for photography and since when the fuck were you so photogenic holy shit

She approached him slowly, an expensive and heavy camera strapped around her slender neck and her hand cradling it to keep it from making a dent in her chest. It was too big for her tiny frame, a tripod might suit her better, he thought as he looked back towards the newspaper in his hands.

“Excuse me, Mr. Gold,” she asked when she got near enough. Stood practically on top of him in fact. Blocked the sun.

He glanced up at her, irritated a little, smitten a lot. “Yes?”

She held up the camera, hefting it with both hands and yes, it was very heavy in her small hands. “Ah, I’m sorry to bother you at breakfast, but I was passing by and noticed you sitting here…”

He looked over his shoulder, the patio at Granny’s was empty but for the two of them. He raised his eyebrow in askance.

“… I, uh, was wondering if you would let me take your picture,” she finished with a curious flush to her cheeks.

He blinked at her, his paper, her camera, the sun forgotten. He tilted his head to the side. “What?”

She smiled at him, nervously, and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear — tiny, rounded and bright pink, her blush had traveled. “Yeah, it’s just you have such a-an interesting face. It’s for my photography class,” she explained, biting her lip.

He stared at her.

“I’ve actually taken a few,” she confessed, crouching down to show him the screen on the back of her camera. “While you were reading. I thought they came out very well…”

He stared at the picture of himself. It wasn’t anything special, it was just him, reading the paper and sipping at his morning coffee. He supposed the composition was good, but there wasn’t anything remarkable about it. It was a picture a first time photographer would take.

He looked up and meet her piercing blue eyes and found that he couldn’t look away. They were so earnest and… honest.

“You want to take my picture?”

She smiled at him, relieved that he was finally contributing to the conversation. “I really would. The camera seems to love you.”

He snorted at that and bit back a retort. The camera loves him, that would be about the only thing in the world then, he thought, bitterly.

“Please, Mr. Gold?” she said, her eyes seeming to grow two sizes as she pleaded with him.

He didn’t know what made him do it or why, but he found himself opening his mouth and instead of telling her to bugger off he said, “That would be fine. Let me know what time and where.”

She beamed at him, smiling wide as if he had just made her very happy. As if she had been counting on him. As if, she was looking forward to it.

“Thank you, Mr. Gold! I’ll come see you later at your shop to talk about the details, yeah?” she said, standing back up with a perky little hop. Foolish. The camera might have broken her neck.

He nodded his head then picked up his newspaper again. “I’ll look forward to it, Miss French,” he said.

He waited until the sound of her footsteps had faded away then he turned in his chair to look back at the way she had come and stopped mid-turn.

She was taking his picture again, her luscious pink lips smiling mysteriously as she pressed the shutter button, then lowered the camera and winked at him before she disappeared around the corner.

* * *

 

_Shutterbug: At SOME point it all devolved into some tasteful erotic pictures. Come on._

 

“Can you just… tilt your head to the side?” she asked, her voice cracking a bit.

Gold, refusing to bush from sheer willpower alone, did as she asked, adjusting his chin according to her directions and then the loud whirring click of her camera sounded in his ears as she took way more pictures than he thought the pose warranted.

He glanced down at himself, the wide purple tie with the swirly bits hanging down his chest and pointing straight towards—

“That’s great, Mr. Gold,” she told him. “Now if you can just roll onto your stomach and look over your shoulder at me? Yeah, just rest your head no your arms, that’s fine.”

He did so, letting his hair dangle in front of his face a bit to hide his shame.

“Good… Good…” she murmured over the ever present clicking sound. Then she stood up to change angles and it seemed to him that she almost caressed his ass cheeks, but had stopped herself just in time. He didn’t know if he was disappointed or glad of it, but he was very glad that he was on his stomach when she whispered away again.

He stared at her, a glare that had sent many of his clients trembling in fear, but it only made her flush beet red at the cheeks and she stammered, “Yes, that’s… good. Good. Keep looking at me like that, Mr. Gold.”

He thought he heard a “god” thrown in there, but then, his own blood was pumping in his ears that he couldn’t be sure. He only knew one thing; He wa going to explode soon.


	65. First Pick

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Turn about is fair play: Tinkerbelle and Zoso get to witness Belle and Gold doing the dirty. Cold noses abound. Followup from Chapter 9. 
> 
> Rated NC-17

 

“They’re beautiful, Mr. Gold!” Belle whispered, excitedly as she leaned over the whelping box. She made a small soft sound and reached in slowly, letting Tinkerbelle decide if it would be okay for her to pet one of the puppies. Too tired to do anything other than lay back, allowing her pups to suckle from her teats, Tinkerbelle simply nuzzled her hand with a wet nose and wuffed softly before laying her head back down in exhaustion.  

Gold watched as Belle gently stroked the nearest puppy, careful not to disturb it from nursing. They hadn’t had much contact with each other after Zoso’s stud service, merely exchanging a few emails when Tink’s pregnancy was confirmed and then a few more to let her know of the progress.

She looked up at him, smiling at him with her cherry red lips, her arm still in the box stroking, stroking, stroking. “You did a great job, Mr. Gold. Everything looks perfect and your whelping box is very well made. Most people just use a laundry basket when the dogs are this small.”

He shrugged a bit and let her admire his handiwork. He may have gone a bit overboard with the wooden box, but Tinkerbelle was his best friend and he wouldn’t let her delivery her babies in anything less than first class. The framed picture of Zoso and Belle was _definitely_ overdoing it, but he’d read that mothers needed a focal point during labor and, even though that advice was for humans, he thought that it may be useful for his dog. In any case, whether it was the box, or the organic pillow he used to line it with, or the picture, or the aromatherapy candles he’d lit, or the calming music he’d played, or any of the number of things he did to make sure Tinkerbelle had the most peaceful experience possible, she came through with flying colors, birthing each tiny puppy with the ease of a practiced veteran. Now there were five mewling little puffballs attached to her and he was contemplating getting her a push present for doing such a good job.

A new collar, maybe. Something without a bell this time.

He glanced at Belle, looking away quickly when he realized she was still staring at him with a peculiar look on her face. She looked… well, she looked beautiful of course, but there was something else that seemed off. He thought her eyes were blue – he _distinctly_ remembered them being the same color of a loch he’d once visited one perfect summer when he was a lad, but now, they almost seemed black as if her pupils were blown wide and her mouth was parted as if she was having difficulty breathing and her cheeks were flushed pink as if… If he didn’t know any better he’d have thought she was… turned on.

Preposterous.

He shuffled away, firmly placing his cane in front of him, gripping it tightly in his two hands. He may snap the head clean off if she kept looking up at him like that. Maybe it was their positions that was making him think these things. She was kneeling by the box and he was still standing. The polite thing to do would be to sit down next to her instead of tower over her like a laird in his manor.

He gave himself some credit for not groaning as he eased his way down, but he’d misjudged and was sitting much closer to her than he’d intended. There was a distinct invasion of space on his part and he meant to move to give her some room, but she smiled at him, in that way that made his insides flop and he forgot his own name for a moment until she spoke.

“Do you know the order in which they arrived?”

That required talking and he pointed out the puppies in order, each one identified with a different color bit of yarn loosely tied around their necks. Four boys, one girl, all of them perfect as far as he could tell.

“Have you considered homes for them?”

He looked at her once more, startled. “No. I thought I would keep them.” Taking Tink’s puppies from her would be heartbreaking. Belle got first pick, he knew that, it was in her contract as part of the deal, but the other four… those were staying put. Maybe Belle would allow him to see the pup she’d taken. Maybe she wouldn’t completely disappear out of his life when the dogs were weaned.

She giggled softly. “ _All_ of them? It would be like an invasion of Tribbles in here.” She scooted closer, placing a warm hand on his knee. “You’re very fond of Tinkerbelle aren’t you?”

He stared at her hand in disbelief. “I… um, I get attached to things, people… Animals, too, I guess.”

She frowned a bit, looking around the house, empty save for the two of them and the dogs. “I don’t understand. You’re alone here. I would think you’d be surrounded by family if that were the case.”

He gave her a bitter smile, half wishing she’d never come over. She was just supposed to inspect the puppies and pick one out. First pick. “I get attached,” he said again, swallowing the lump that lodged itself in his throat. “A bit too much for some people. Apparently it’s off-putting.” He looked down at his lap, unwilling to watch the disgust appear on her face.

“It only shows that you care.”

“Or that I don’t care enough to let people go when they want to. It’s best that I don’t get attached I find.”

“So, now, instead of becoming _attached_ , you… drive people away? To keep yourself from getting hurt?” she asked.

He shrugged again, watching with alarm at her hand inching its way further up his leg until it was firmly, without any doubt whatsoever, resting on his thigh close enough for her to feel his traitorous cock which was now very interested in the proceedings. “What—”

“Mr. Gold,” Belle breathed, her face inches from his. She smelled of roses and peppermint Lifesavers.  “I’ve been thinking a lot about you these past few weeks and, well,” she brought her lips to his ear and whispered, “I get attached, too.”

“But—”

“No buts. I like you.”

“You don’t know me?” he said, shuddering when he felt a huff of warm breath against his cheek.

“I don’t, not very well at least. But I’d like to get to know you.”

He held his ground, trembling in anticipation of what she would do next, until he felt her warm tongue lick the shell of his ear, then he snapped, bringing his hands up to cradle her face as he kissed her and kissed her until she pulled away gasping for air. Somehow Belle had crawled into his lap and wrapped her legs around him until he was full of her, breathing her in, tasting her lips, her neck, her shoulders, bare underneath the cardigan which was quickly tossed to the side.

He dimly heard a yip, but paid it no mind in his efforts to keep up with the whirlwind in his lap. Belle was everywhere and he soon found himself stripped down to his socks and Belle, naked and soft and warm, with lips swollen from his kisses and her hair irreparably mussed, was smirking at him with amusement as she slid them off his feet with a couple of yanks, flinging them over her shoulder.

The floor wasn’t the first place he’d pick to make love. Not at his age, not with his ankle, but the sight of Belle beaming at him as she slowly crawled up over his legs, not caring that he could see how her breasts swung with her movement quickly changed his mind. The mirror he’d bought then forgotten to hang up two years ago gave him the perfect view of her ass and the swollen pink cleft between her legs. She pushed against his shoulder until he lay down and she crept up until she was sitting on his belly.

“You’re so beautiful,” he said, reaching up with a trembling hand to caress her nipple, marveling at how it puckered and tightened at his touch.

“And _you_ are handsome,” she said, raising up on her knees then, with a low moan, slowly sinking down onto him until she was flush against him.

Gold bit his cheek in an effort to keep from immediately coming as she set a deliberately slow pace, leaning back with her hands on his knees, rocking and rocking against him. She kept her legs spread wide so he could see his cock disappearing inside her, re-emerging glistening wet as her lips clung to him with each thrust and he let out a series of curses as he watched her ride him, thrusting his hips up in time with her. Her hair brushed against his thighs and, if he tilted his head to look in the mirror, he could see the way it bounced and swayed in time with her movements.

Her face commanded the most attention though, her full bottom lip was caught between her teeth as she concentrated on him, on her, on them together, working her way towards something he desperately wanted to be a part of. She was incredible and he almost didn’t think that she was real except there was no way his imagination would be able to dream her up, this miracle of a woman who accepted him inside her, no questions asked, no hesitation, no arguing, no dealing.

It would be ungentlemanly to just lay there and let her do all the work. He reached down, holding his thumb over where they were joined until he found her clit and gently nudged it until he found the spot that made her cry out, circling it until she shuddered and jerked over him with triumphant cries until she collapsed on his chest.

He rolled them over then, uncaring of the hard wooden floor against his knees, and began to shunt into her hard and fast, setting a brutal pace that had him gasping against her neck. Belle wrapped her legs around his waist, urging him closer with her feet against his ass and soon he lifted himself on shaking, rubbery arms as he finished with a hoarse cry.

He rolled off her, not wanting to crush her with his boneless body. He was going to die. He was going to die and go straight to hell, but at the moment he didn’t give a damn because Belle was scooting closer and cuddling him with her leg drawn up over his and her head resting on his shoulder.

“That was—” he began.

“Mmmmm, yes. It was,” she agreed. “Are you attached?”

“Irrevocably,” he said with a chuckle, leaning over to kiss the top of her head. “You?”

“Irrevocably,” she said, leaning up on an elbow. “I’ve decided Tinkerbelle can keep her puppies. My first pick is you.”


End file.
